Sustainable construction movement has been deeply transforming the traditional construction sector. As an important part of the sustainable construction delivery system, sustainable/green building rating systems play an essential role in implementing the sustainable principles into the construction industry and assessing the building’s rating. Most of the countries of the world have now developed their own rating systems. But as a matter of fact all the sustainability rating systems are not the same as they all provide different weightages to the assessment tools and even mention different assessment tools according to their available resources and regional location. Also each rating system has its own method of calculating weightages. For evaluation of buildings in Saudi Arabia the other rating systems cannot be used because for Saudi Arabia ‘water’ is of major concern but the other rating systems provide very less weightage to it. Hence building rating system developed for any specific region becomes inappropriate for other regions. This paper makes detailed description and comparison among the mainstream green building rating systems and their common assessment tools. A short discussion about these sustainable/green building assessment tools has also been made, and it also briefly points out the importance and urgency of a separate sustainable rating system for Saudi Arabia and gulf region. New assessment tools and their weightages have been proposed in this paper for Saudi Arabia, which shall be very beneficial for the concerned authorities and shall help as guideline for the development of a separate rating system in the Gulf region. |
