Attached are the raw notes from the Design Process Conversations.

And here are the Guiding Questions from the Agenda Survey:

Design Process: how to intervene to get better outcomes?

How do I crack the nut of making a difference within my firm in the Design Process?

What strategies alter our fast-paced design... Read more

Hi all, it's time to schedule our next session. Who's in? Ping me at amt@vmdo.com if you want to be considered part of the working group, and fill out your availability on this Doodle poll.

If you just want to monitor what's going on, we'll post updates to the Working Group page. 

The agenda for this call is to figure out what we... Read more

Hi Brilliant People: 

I'm hoping you can help me with a quick research question. A local colleague is trying to make the case to replace an existing old slate roof with slate vs. "slate look" asphalt shingles on a local public historic building. The bids are 6X higher for slate over the alternative 25-30 year solutions. They understand... Read more

Hi. I'm Dan Piselli, the new Director of Sustainability at FXCollaborative. You all may know my predecessor Ilana Judah - she and I worked together closely for many years, and I can only hope to emulate her success.

FYI, a few things about me: I've been a project architect and manager for a number of LEED projects, most recently the... Read more

Hi All,

In case you haven't been following State news lately, Massachusetts has a pretty major climate bill on the Governor's desk right now.  He has through tomorrow to either sign or veto it.  There's a ton of support from the bill from advocate groups.  MA AIA and the BSA both wrote letters to the Governor in support.  This only... Read more

Hi everyone, I'm sure that some of you already received the message below from Kira Gould (and/or others), but assuming that it didn't get to all of you, I'm forwarding it here. I believe that Lindsay is in common cause with all of us here on this forum, and will provide meaningful built-environment contributions to COP.
Thanks for... Read more

I looked through the forums and was surprised to see that from what I can tell this 2018 article from Yale I'm going to share here has not been discussed previously.  It basically says that FSC is not trustworthy, ineffective, and greenwashed, as critiqued by the likes of Greenpeace and others.

I would like to hear from someone in the... Read more

Just highlighting a tool from Circular Ecology (the group that brings you the Inventory of Carbon and Energy data) for measuring Scope 1 and 2

https://circularecology.com/organisational-carbon-footprint-tool.html

Welcome to the quiz portion of Community-Scale Sustainability: Accelerating Change for People and Planet

Learning Objectives
Upon completing this course, participants will be able to:


Explain how combining stakeholder efforts and resources can achieve greater resilience and sustainability for communities.

Discuss... Read more

The Winter Summit participants have had this for a few weeks now, and no one has screamed about anything being inaccurate, misleading, or too revealing, so it's time to share the latest Summit report more widely. 

Per our long-standing policy, this report can be shared outside our "safe space"--it's a great way to share the wealth of... Read more

If I'm remembering correctly, someone at the summer summit mentioned working on / or being familiar with the Berkeley CA gas ban. A town here in MA is also considering a ban and wanted to get some feedback from Berkeley.

Hi folks, I was asking around during Greenbuild and getting a variety of answers on this, and since our Contractor Commitments make a distinction between "GC's" mobile equipment as scope 1 and "Sub's" mobile equipment as scope 3. I know that many of us acting as "CM" claim full "operational control" of a jobsite and consider all fuel using on... Read more

Hi All,

We are trying to make a case for hiring a full time sustainability specialist in our firm, and one of the arguments we want to use is that the ratio of sustainability specialists vs the ratio of full time employees in our company is quite low. That being said, I want to have an understanding of where other firms stand with this... Read more

CEUs are available for reading our entire plumbing guide. Click here to learn more and take the quiz.

Constructed wetlands and other natural filtration systems close the nutrient and water loop, permitting safe and sustainable wastewater treatment and reuse right on the site.

We look for... Read more

Dear SD Leaders,

As some of you may have heard, EHDD has been working for the last year in developing a data model to support early phase goal setting for holistic low carbon design. This data model is at the heart of our Early Phase Integrated Carbon (EPIC) assessment tool. EPIC is a data-driven goal-setting tool for use in the earliest... Read more