All posts filed under: certification

fire station caldern

First of a kind: Caldern fire station awarded DGNB Gold

Published by Christine Schröder

In Germany, the community of volunteer firefighters plays a key role in dealing with fires, floods and other major incidents. Recently, a new working facility was built for the special community of volunteers in the Hessian town of Caldern. Now, when an emergency call comes in, the firefighters burst out of a sustainable building that is even the proud owner of a DGNB Gold Certificate. It’s also worth mentioning that it was the first time in the history of the DGNB that a firefighting organisation has been through the certification process.

An expensive attempt at image cultivation? Five facts showing why that’s not the point of a DGNB certificate

An expensive attempt at image cultivation? Five facts showing why that’s not the point of a DGNB certificate

Published by Johannes Kreißig

Once a year, the German Taxpayers Federation (BdSt) publishes its ‘Schwarzbuch’ containing examples of what it considers to be wasteful uses of tax revenues by government departments. The current edition names the DGNB certification system as one such example, under the heading of ‘Expensive Image Cultivation’. This leads us to question whether the selection and research methods used by the authors were as thorough as they should be. In this case at least, it shows that judgement was handed down without understanding the subject in the necessary depth. So here in the blog – with the necessary brevity of the format – we present the most important reasons why certification is actually worth it.