Abstract:
Green building construction is a concept under sustainable development, which has been introduced
in many countries. GREENSL is the green rating tool which was introduced to Sri Lanka by the
Green Building Council Sri Lanka and its contribution to the expansion of Sri Lankan green
construction, has been very slow over the past decade according to the certified no of buildings. The
main objective of this study was to assess the essence of Sri Lankan green evaluation content with
internationally recognized CASBEE, BCA-GM and GBI ratings in the Asian region. Desk study
including qualitative analysis was done to achieve the main objective of the study. Residential new
construction manuals of CASBEE 2014 edition (Japan), BCA Green 2016 revision (Singapore), GBI
2013 version 3.0 (Malaysia) and GREENSL 2018 version 2.0 (Sri Lanka) were studied to gather
data. Comparative analysis was done using check lists prepared with issues under each criterion.
Categories under the content i.e. sustainable site, energy, material, water and indoor environment
which are common to all tools were studied. According to the results, it was revealed that,
GREENSL has paid its highest attention to all the selected criteria and some specific issues also have
been addressed than other rating tools such as water efficiency in air conditioning, innovative
wastewater technologies and constructed wetland. Specifically, GREENSL has considered
construction waste management, hazardous waste management and operation solid waste
management while other tools have considered about only one or two from them. When comparing to
other green rating tools selected, GREENSL shows paramount importance since it can be used for all
categories of buildings unlike in other rating tools which have separate guidelines such as for
residential, non-residential, new and existing buildings. Therefore, it can be concluded that the
GREENSL rating tool can be used as an international rating tool such as CASBEE, BCA GM and
GBI and its content is far ahead of the other tools. It was suggested to address building security
directly through the tool and to mention the cost-effective construction methods to motivate towards
more green buildings in Sri Lanka.
Keywords: BCA GM; CASBEE; GBI; Green rating tool; GREENSL
