Green Tradies Program Launched
Daniel Wurm | 21 Oct 2016
Thousands of trades people and trade contractors will now able to receive training in sustainability through a new program called ‘Green Tradies™’, developed by the Green Building Institute.
The Green Tradies™ Program has been developed especially for trade contractors wanting to ‘green’ their business and learn how to choose and recommend sustainable materials. It also is designed to help contractors looking to gain contracts on green building projects such as Green Star, and HIA GreenSmart.
This accredited training is designed to help trade contractors such as carpenters, plasterers, floor sanders, tilers, brick layers, and carpet layers understand sustainable trade practices and products.
“For most trade contractors, this is the first time that there has been an accredited course which gives them the skills they need to identify sustainable products, cut their resource use, introduce recycling, and then communicate that to their clients” says Green Building Institute trainer Daniel Wurm, who co-ordinated the development of the course.
Course participants will be awarded a nationally recognised qualification, which means their skills are transportable, and can be recognised on any green building project, or on any project where sustainability is the main focus. GBI brought together Australia’s leading award-winning trainers and instructional designers from the green building industry to create a course that makes sustainability understandable to trade contractors with little or no previous knowledge of practical green building processes.
“The course shows tradies how to conduct a sustainability audit on-site, the principles of embodied energy, recycling strategies, and how to create a Sustainability Action Plan for their business. This course is ideal for contractors, site foremen and supervisors”, says Daniel. “It’s been designed to help tradies green their supply chain, and market themselves in the fastest growing industry sector in the building industry. It uses dozens of real-life case studies and interviews with Australia’s greenest tradies to demonstrate practical ways a contractor or supervisor can implement sustainability.”
The new course features state-of-the-art multi-media lessons, which can be streamed directly to tradies smart-phones, tablets or PCs, even while they are on-site. GBI’s instructional designers used cutting edge video response technology and e-learning systems to create fun, engaging lessons, scenarios, and practical tasks that appeal to tradies. The course is available 24 hours a day, anytime, and anywhere there is an internet connection. Students and trainers interact face-to-face using innovative web-cam technology, and can be adapted for Google Glass.
“This course speaks the language of tradies”, says Daniel. “We’ve taken complex concepts and presented them in such a way that any tradie can identify how to introduce sustainable products and materials into their business. It’s a course created by tradies, for tradies. Once they have completed the training, they will have the confidence to green their business and then market it to their clients.”
The course was developed in response to consumer surveys that showed that builders and owner-builders constructing sustainable homes found it difficult to find trade contractors who would co-operate with sustainability requirements
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Contact GBI for more information: Daniel 0402 312234