Green Building (Homestar) Adviser

Would you like to :

  • do meaningful work alongside people who care about your wellbeing and that of others and our environment?
  • earn Living wage (or higher)
  • work hours that suit you, and
  • work mostly from home?

Are you a:

  • Architectural designer/ Architect, OR
  • Engineer, OR
  • Building scientist/ technologist, OR
  • Quantity surveyor, OR
  • Licensed Building Practitioner Level 2 and 3

If so, you might be the person we're looking for. 

An opportunity has opened up in our team as a Green Building (Homestar) Adviser to help people and tradespeople understand how to design and build homes more sustainably, efficiently, accessibly, and affordably.

No experience with Homestar or Green Building rating tools is necessary - comprehensive training provided.

We're looking for someone for an initial fixed term period of 26-38 weeks (MSD Community Flexi-wage funding dependent) from March to November 2022 to train up to help us complete Homestar Assessments. After this, we are hoping to secure enough additional sales and funding to enable the role to continue, or even better to grow the team so we can connect more people to meaningful work!

What's the role about?

New Zealand homes are unacceptably cold, damp, mouldy, and inefficient, leading to unhealthy living conditions and various health issues. Even new builds aren't made as sustainably, affordable, and livable as they could be. With recent and upcoming changes in New Zealand legislation and codes, we have the ability to influence the construction sector for good.

As a Green Building Adviser, you’ll be providing impartial, practical advice and affordable solutions to homeowners and tradespeople to make sure that they build the healthiest, most sustainable, energy and water efficient, accessible and livable homes possible for their budget, while minimizing waste and environmental impacts on site.

A normal day could see you reviewing plans and specifications or possibly visiting a building site to talk to tradespeople working on a project to influence what materials and design features are included/ excluded, and collecting evidence to file along with numbers entered into an MS Excel model.

Who are you guys?

Sustain & Enable is a Community-Enterprise and Social Enterprise that delivers targeted Environmental and Social projects for Public Good. If you read the first couple of pages of our Charitable Constitution (Kaupapa) that should explain what we mean and give you a good idea about our ethics and how we like to work with others: https://app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/service/services/documents/BE7A537B7997FE71C35D40E6CA7714BD 

Any profits we make are usually reinvested into paying and training our wider team and our other social and environmental benefit projects.

Our team: We like to recruit people who find it hard to get back into work (eg: people with mental health challenges, disabilities, underemployed, unemployed, have experienced stressful/ unhealthy work environments, etc), People who care about others, the climate, and the environment. Our people come from a diverse group of disciplines and ethnicities. We honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi and work collaboratively with others.

Our Stakeholders: We take on contracts directly or indirectly with Government Agencies, and often talk to Waste and Construction Industry, Community, Health and Social Sector Organisations. 

Clients may be people with health conditions, unhealthy homes, experiencing energy poverty, low income, minorities, other poverty indicators, Māori/ Pasifika, vulnerable people such as children or elderly, etc. Also people building their own homes or struggling to get into housing (rent/ own).

This particular role deals mainly with clients from the Construction Industry, Property Professionals and Tradespeople.

What sort of work will your project be doing?

Assessing plans and physical homes as they are built to ensure they meet NZ Green Building Council’s Homestar guidelines for sustainability and resilience for water, energy, waste, carbon, etc.

Working with stakeholders to help them build the most livable homes possible (affordable, sustainable, resilient, adaptable, accessible for disabilities/ all ages) so that future housing stock is less expensive to live in and healthier and more comfortable for occupants.

NZGBC prerequisites for their training are for someone with one of the following qualifications/ experience to access their Homestar Designer or Assessor qualifications:

  • Architectural designer, architect
  • Engineer
  • Building scientist/technologist
  • Quantity surveyor
  • Licensed Building Practitioner Level 2 and 3

You can read about their requirements and training costs here: https://www.nzgbc.org.nz/Category?Action=View&Category_id=240 

If we can’t find someone with one of the above qualifications/ experience we might be able to take on someone to be a (lower level) Homestar Practitioner, to assist us to create submissions but this will be less useful for the person recruited, and harder to transfer skills after the project. Our intention in good faith is to try to build this mahi up over time to create demand for the successful candidate so we can afford to keep them on past the 26-38 weeks to do similar project-based or permanent work. The best chance we have for this is to recruit someone who has the right prerequisites.

How will your work benefit the community or environment?

  • Help to reduce the 20% of NZ’s carbon emissions that are embodied in homes/ buildings.
  • Less waste in construction (approx 50% of waste to landfill is from construction and demolition waste)
  • Help stakeholders to learn how to build better (snowball effect influencing building in NZ for more sustainability going forward)
  • Teach the industry that partnering with the community sector works for them as we have a lot to offer.
  • Help people get features they need in their homes to live comfortably and access healthy levels of temperature and humidity in an affordable way – particularly if they have a disability, low income, social indicators or plan to rent the home to people who do.
  • Significant health benefits for occupants and deferred Health costs for public sector.
  • Demand management - reduce wasted energy and water (scarce resources) so that future investment in large scale damaging infrastructure can be delayed or cancelled and there are enough resources to go around.

If this sounds like something you'd like to have a go at, please apply - we'd love to hear from you.

Please send your application to work@se.org.nz 

Job Details

  • 1-40 hours per week (building over time)
  • Part-time contract role (or fixed-term employee role if MSD/ WiNZ approved), possibility to move to full-time over 12 months based on business growth and needs.
  • Living wage, paid monthly
  • Some training provided, including cross training opportunities.
  • Remote work, on-site, office-based, and various other locations of work as required

Our People are:

  • Ethical and honest, avoiding surprises,
  • Supportive and caring,
  • Collaborative, friendly and helpful,
  • Proactive and accountable,
  • Reliable and dependable,
  • Committed to learning and cooperating,
  • Conscious of their health and well-being, but available for occasional weekend work

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