SkyParks Development Ltd, Malta International Airport plc’ subsidiary entrusted with the development of the SkyParks Business Centre has applied for the BRE Environmental Assessment Method certification. This assessment process will lead to SkyParks becoming the first building in Malta to obtain this kind of certification.

Based in the UK, BREEAM is the leading and most widely used environmental assessment method for buildings. It sets the standard for best practice in sustainable design and has become the de facto measure used to describe a building’s environmental performance.

SkyParks Business Centre is investing in the highest level of energy efficient systems for air conditioning, air ventilation, heat recovery units and vertical transportation, and plans to maximise energy conservation whilst limiting wastages in lighting systems, water circulations and sanitary ware. In doing this SkyParks intends to ensure an improved internal environment with high indoor quality.

For SkyParks Business Centre, a BREEAM certification would mean obtaining high scores in three leading measures: Location Strengths – situated in proximity to public ameneties, transportation, medicare and leisure activity, Performance History – with a focus on quality and transparency, and Building Efficiencies – referring to structural and engineering finishes, access and exit routing, parking, energy management and scalability for expansion. There are eight criteria upon which BREEAM assess the building’s environmental impacts.

These vary from management to health and well-being, energy, transport, water, material and waste, as well as land use and ecology and pollution.

MIA CEO Julian Jaeger said that it was always MIA’s intention that the SkyParks Business Centre is developed as a centre of excellence, not only in the services it will offer to its prospective tenants, but also in the way it is conceived as a building.

“This certification means that our business centre will achieve high levels of functionality, flexibility, maintainability and durability, coupled with low environmental impacts and consequently attaining high user satisfaction, quality and control. We are proud of the fact that our business centre will be the first building to achieve this status in the Maltese Islands,” he said.