The partners and staff of GSS Architecture have recognised our responsibility to use our position in the construction industry to encourage and carry out a more sustainable approach to building.

We are also committed to making our own internal housekeeping as sustainable as possible.

By carrying out these actions in a controlled and systematic manner, we believe that we at GSS Architecture can contribute to the fight against climate change.

We have set up a sustainability group with representatives from each office that has prepared our compliance document for BS EN ISO 14001:2004 - Environmental Management Systems. The group is tasked with monitoring and driving our adoption of ISO 14001, and the other supporting associated 'green' actions.

We are committed to:

• Encouraging our clients to make their projects as environmentally responsible as possible, and to providing costed sustainable options to aid their decision making.
• Training our designers to enable them to maximise the sustainable opportunities that a project offers. We will use BREEAM as a guide document and as a base for a designer checklist.
• Encouraging our fellow consultants and building contractors to adopt the principles of our Environmental Policy, or to develop their own.
• Ensuring that our offices are run in an environmentally friendly manner; educating and encouraging all staff to join in this objective; and putting in place green policies for the purchase, replacement, and recycling of supplies.
• Striving to continually improve our environmental performance and to put in place measured targets and objectives to ensure that we do.

The details of these commitments are contained in our environmental management system, ISO 14001, which is a live and regularly updated document, available for public viewing.

GSS Architecture believes that it is important for us all to consider energy efficient and sustainable issues, which we must address.