News
New BOMA BESt certification categories
The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) of Canada’s environmental certification program, BOMA BESt, has recently been enhanced to incorporate three new categories. BOMA BESt, which stands for Building Environmental Standards, is being adopted by many building owners for environmental certification of existing commercial buildings.
July 8, 2009 By Newswire
The three new categories of BOMA BESt include light industrial properties, enclosed shopping centres and open air retail properties such as plazas and power centres. Incorporating certification for additional categories will enable better energy and environmental performance benchmarking for these types of properties. “The enhancement now enables BOMA BESt to provide a consistent and reliable method to evaluate the overall sustainability of buildings across the office, industrial and retail asset classes,” said Ian M. Stewart, Chair of BOMA Canada, the national organization which serves as the voice of the commercial real estate industry.
BOMA Canada worked diligently over the past year with representatives from the retail and industrial sectors to develop the new assessments for BOMA BESt certification, which are distinct from the office assessment. The new BOMA BESt certification process for retail and industrial properties is consistent with the existing program, including an online assessment, followed by a third-party on-site verification. The best practices for BOMA BESt certification are standard across all asset classes.
Industrial sector buildings that achieve BOMA BESt certification will be the properties that stand out and offer their tenants greater opportunities to go green within their space. Energy benchmarking and management are important parts of the BOMA BESt assessment for these properties, which may include warehousing, light manufacturing and flex space. BOMA BESt certification identifies these buildings as ones that are managed sustainably and rewards the effort involved in obtaining tenant engagement.
Similarly, retail properties certified through BOMA BESt will be the properties that also demonstrate sound environmental management, strong performance and a forward thinking team of managers. BOMA BESt certification helps shopping centres stay competitive and on track for sustainability through continual environmental improvement.
In recognizing achievements in sustainability and environmentally responsible building management, BOMA BESt offers four levels of certification, each of which require that buildings meet the industry best practices established. Applications for the new categories will be accepted by BOMA as of July 10, 2009.
For more information visit www.bomacanada.ca.
Print this page
