I am excited to share with you the final draft of the letter back to LP50 manufacturers.  The LP50 manufacturers sent their “Closing the Loop on Product Transparency” to design firms earlier this year.  For more background information, please check out Chris Hellstern's original August 20th post on this Green Gurus forum.  When we posted the... Read more

Products & Materials Specialist Brent Ehrlich excels at deep, unbiased, and nuanced technical research on the health and environmental impacts of green building products and materials. Some areas of focus include:

product and material constituents, including their risks

product certifications

third-party product... Read more

Hi all- 

DiMella Shaffer is seeking a Sustainability Practice Leader! For the last 2.5 years, I have been setting the structure in place, making change, and providing thought-leadership as the first Sustainability Practice Leader (director level leadership) at DiMella Shaffer in Boston. It has been a fantastic firm to work for and this... Read more

https://www.linkedin.com/company/buildinggreen/jobs/

The AIA conference is coming up soon as well.  It is scheduled for June 19-23 in NYC. I have heard about a lot of great sessions and I am thinking it would be helpful if we could collect info here.  Please respond to this message with info about your session and I will compile all of this into a handy reference document.  I will start with my... Read more

Hi All,

I want to share this report, released today, that I and some other folks on Green Gurus have been working on.  The report dispels the myth that Zero Energy Buildings cost more (specifically in Massachusetts) and it goes further, making the case that Zero Energy Buildings are actually great investments.  Take a look, tell us what... Read more

I think they look great - thanks to BuildingGreen for setting this up!  A few comments/questions:

Hi all,

AGC is the biggest umbrella organization for general contractors in the states. To date, there has been practically no interaction between the SCL and AGC. In my mind, the SCL group is the most knowledgeable group of dedicated sustainability professionals out there; so is there a way that we can partner with AGC to collaborate ... Read more

Hey Gurus. Might anyone have experience, or thoughts, with regard to establishing an energy use baseline for a new advanced manufacturing facility we are working on for a regional technical community college? This type of academic facility is so relatively new, the program doesn't fall into the typical "College/University" building type from ... Read more

Since the launch of the Contractor’s Commitment in late 2020, nineteen companies have become signatories and many others are using the guidelines as a roadmap for their firms.   Now that the pilot year of the Contractor’s Commitment is complete, it is important to consider if and how the guidelines should evolve to be the most impactful.  Over... Read more

Welcome to this practice session for the LEED AP v4 exam, and good luck!

All the exam questions and explanations that follow were authored by Alex Spilger, LEED AP BD+C of GreenStep Education, and are provided in this BuildingGreen "exam simulator" through a special partnership with GreenStep and with our friends at the Poplar Network.... Read more

This question came to me via our mutual friend Josh Jacobs, but while interesting it's a bit out of my range of expertise... 

In short, a critical materials assessment specifically focused on airbourne byproducts from a manufacturing process that would be first-of-its-kind in the U.S. 

Hi everyone, we had a great first all-network call with the SCL members who joined us last month! We’re looking forward to the next all-SCL call on January 8, 2024 at 1pm ET.

In the meantime, we’d love for you to fill out this survey to help us best tailor the all-SCL calls to the needs of the network. Please fill out the survey by... Read more

We are attempting to use Tally on a couple projects and are wondering how others are using the tool in their design process. If any experienced users out there would be willing to have a brief phone conversation I would appreciate it. Thanks

Know any awesome sustainability leaders within GC or CM firms? They can be at mid-sized or large construction companies—any firm in the ENR top 400 qualifies for sure, others might need some vetting. The key is people who have sustainability as the focus of how they spend their time--either formally by title or otherwise. 

We want to... Read more

When BuildingGreen started publication in 1992, simply finding building products designed with environmental benefits in mind was a big challenge. 

In the years since we’ve seen rapid advances in green building materials and products, and manufacturers are beginning to take topics such as embodied carbon and social justice concerns—... Read more