Setting system properties before running Serenity-BDD build task

I’m trying to use a Serenity-BDD project, but the application is not pulling the CLI arguments of -Denvironment and -Dservicebranches. I have these properties as blank values in my local.properties file, and they’re not getting assigned when my app runs.

All I’m trying to do is use build.gradle to use System.getProperty(‘environment’) and System.getProperty(‘servicebranches’) before I use the already created ‘build’ task that comes with Serenity. How would I do this? Do I build a whole new task, where I use these getProperties, and then call the build task? Do I have to specify the assignment of these same named variables in the local.properties file?