Learning about sustainability and green construction principles from pilot houses in Zambia

The Zambia Green Jobs Programme (ZGJP) is a sustainable development programme which facilitates private sector development for inclusive green growth and decent green jobs, especially for women and young people. The focus is not just on the building technology or solution but the use of scalable demonstrations to (1) promote the change in mind-sets, skills, attitudes and behaviour on sustainable construction; and (2) develop markets for green construction by sharing the risk for innovation and product development with private investors and developers. This paper presents the methodology and results of the ZGJP demonstration house project. Three houses were pre-designed in an architectural competition in 2014 and the winning solutions were selected for the pilot phase (2015-2016) at the North Western Province in Zambia. The sustainability aspects in the pilot phase included design aspects (e.g. flexibility in space design, passive solar prevention, daylighting, natural ventilation), technology solutions (solar PV, window technology, energy efficient lighting, local materials), quality aspects in building phase (supervision, material testing) and capacity building issues (business for local contractors, job creation for locals, improved construction practises, contractual practises). The sustainability of the houses was evaluated based on review of the plans, interviews of the stakeholders and on-site visit including 'walk-through' evaluation using the Sustainable Building Assessment Tool (SBAT). The first users are moving in the houses before the end of 2016 and user responses will be available after that. The multi-step approach ending up to real houses with real habitants will give valuable feedback for the future design, green technology selections and construction process. The paper presents the project and critically evaluates the process and the final product. The review will be distilled into recommendations for the next phase sustainable green houses, which can be replicated to fill the huge gap in housing needs in Zambia.