VTAS understands and recognises that as architects and designers of the built environment we contribute to the impacts upon the environment in both the design and the operation of our practice. Of the two, our designs are likely to be the more significant source of improvement in reducing human’s impact on the environment. It is, however, also important that we do things by example and try our utmost to reduce our office’s.

We seek to be the avant-garde in sustainable building design and through our practices the positive contributor to a sustainable design process. We have implemented and committed to the continual review and improvement of the way we operate environmentally as part of our quality assurance policy and effectively circulate this information among the team members.

We take pride in our operation with full compliance in all relevant environmental regulation and to protecting the environment and minimize adverse environmental impacts.

The Architecture

VTAS encourages and assists its clients and consultant teams to consider and implement the use of sustainable principles in all of their works. These sustainable principles are aimed as raising the quality of the occupants’ life, conserving natural achieving significant and sustained reductions in all forms of adverse environmental impacts.

In this pursuit of the principle of sustainable development, our aim is to ensure that every intervention into the built environment not only improves a group or individual’s quality of life but also seeks to eliminate waste, minimise  pollution and conserve energy and natural resources. The practice consciously aims to avoid the use of materials and products that may be damaging to the environment.

Sustainability to us is a multilayered undertaking, we not only try to reduce the impact on the environment with the design and construction of buildings and installations, but also in the maximization of the utility of our design so that it may minimise the need for more construction and hence reduce further impacts in the long run. To VTAS a sustainable building does not stop at being certifiably sustainable but has to also be desirable, maintainable and flexible, all of which will contribute to the longevity of the buildings and as a result more sustainable.

Our aim is to deliver sustainable development through sustainable design, insofar as this is possible within the instructions received from our clients, and through such developments encourage and facilitate lifestyle activity that together with those developments support and enhance the long term well being of the global ecosystem and all of its inhabitants.

The Practice

Our aim is to deliver our services in a manner that reduces our potential impact on the environment at the same time providing a safe and healthy workplace for our employees and visitors. We strive to:

• Integrate the consideration of environmental concerns and impacts into everything that we do.
• Promote environmental awareness amongst all our employees.
• Encourage the efficient use of materials and resources and the reduction of waste through re-use and recycling.
• Where possible purchase recycled, recyclable or refurbished equipment, products and materials where these alternatives are available, economic and suitable.
• Promote the efficient use of energy in the workplace in terms of heating, lighting and equipment usage.
• Endeavour to reduce water consumption.
• Where required by legislation or where significant health, safety or environmental hazards exist, develop and maintain appropriate emergency response programmes.
• Encourage the use of alternative forms of transport, including cycling, where it is safe and effective to do so.
• Encourage the use of public transport in preference to travel by car/taxi wherever it is possible and effective to do so.
• Endeavour to reduce the use of air travel as far as possible by the use of alternative communication tools such as video conferencing etc.
• Communicate our environmental commitment to clients, customers and the public and encourage them to support it.
• Strive to continually improve our environmental performance and reduce the impact of our activities by periodically reviewing our environmental policy in the light of our current and planned future activities.