Quantity surveyors urged to help protect environment
The Chairman of the Quantity Surveyors Division of the Ghana Institution of Surveyors, Kofi Obeng Ayirebi, has urged professionals of the area to be responsible and diligent in the discharge of their professional responsibilities to protect the environment.
He said it was important to adhere to sustainable environmental practices as a symbol of distinguished standard in the operations of the professionals.
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He said the onus was on such professionals to facilitate any effort to protect the environment for future generations.
Mr Ayirebi said this at the opening of the 2022 Quantity Surveyors annual seminar in Accra.
Quantity surveying is one of the three elements of surveying involved in the conception stage of construction projects.
Quantity surveyors
The quantity surveyors cost preparation works, produce and cost a schedule of all the materials to be used during the project, among others.
The 2022 conference, dubbed: “Sustainability — The Impact of the Quantity Surveyors World”, was to drum home the need to safeguard the environment because of the impact of the services of the professionals and its practitioners on the built environment.
Mr Ayirebi said this year’s seminar sought to underscore the importance of sustainability in the way quantity surveyors operated.
A real estate economist and lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Dr Kenneth Donkor Hyiaman, made a presentation on green building rating and certifications, taking participants through the history of certifications and how the current regime could impact Ghana’s built environment.
Sustainability
Foster Osae-Akonnor of the Ghana Green Building Council, who also presented a paper on requirements for green buildings, lamented the destruction of the environment without recourse to sustainability.
He noted that the current illegal mining menace, commonly called galamsey locally, said to have become about the biggest threat to the environment, for instance, had no sustainability plan for the next generation.
Mr Osae-Akonnor said sustainability meant meeting present day needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, stressing that such needs were not limited to covering social and economic resources.
The President of the Ghana Institution of Surveyors, Rev. Mrs Rose Margaret Asubonteng, noted that the seminar was critical, given the role of quantity surveyors, and the impact of their services on the built environment.
She said the exigencies of the time, including climate change and human activities on the environment, made it imperative for such fora to re-orient members on the need to adopt innovative ways to protect the environment.