Plan To Make It A Must For New Buildings To Meet GBI Criteria

The government is expected to introduce a new policy under the Tenth Malaysia Plan (10MP) to require all new buildings to meet the criteria under the Green Building Index (GBI).

Public Works Department (PWD) director-general, Datuk Seri Dr Judin Abdul Karim, said the Economic Planning Unit in the Prime Minister's Department would decide on the criteria.

"Since the government has shown its desire to adopt the GBI under the 9th Malaysia Plan, I don't see any hesitation to introduce the policy under the 10MP," he said.

Judin was speaking to reporters after delivering a keynote address at the launch of Infrastructure Asia's Conference on Building Information Modelling and Sustainable Architecture here on Wednesday.

He said existing buildings were expected to be upgraded to meet the GBI requirements in stages as it was expensive to do it immediately.

On another development, he said the PWD has introduced a new project review process, 'Gerbang Nilai' to supervise infrastructure projects.

He said this would ensure that a project was really perfect and in accordance with the plan submitted.

"We want all the new projects to mature from each stage as many do not know their initial mistakes and realise it during the finishing stage," he said.

Source: Bernama 19 August 2009