I'm the Director of Sustainability at Columbia Construction.  We're headquartered in the Boston area and primarily work in the Northeast.  Along with the typical challenges of projects and evolving rating systems, I'm looking forward to learning and sharing strategies for corporate sustainability progress.

This past year I'm proud to... Read more

Some plasters have extremely high embodied energy or petroleum-based ingredients.

BuildingGreen-Approved Plaster

Products approved include:

Hello Green Gurus,

We have an exciting cross-network opportunity coming up next week! Members of the SDL (Design Leaders) and SCL (Construction Leaders) networks will share about their experience at the recent SDL/SCL Summits. We will also preview the Reports for each Summit, and share some news about other events coming up this year.... Read more

Hi everyone,

The Summer 2024 SDL Summit on-site lodging (including shared and private rooms) is now full. However, we are excited to announce that we’ve introduced a limited number of commuter tickets for the Summit. If you missed registration for tickets with on-site lodging, you can still attend the Summit by arranging your own lodging... Read more

We think fresh water supplies are endless, but this idealistic vision is clouded by the smoke of countless forest fires in the U.S. West and elsewhere. Instead of endless bounty, climate change is bringing us catastrophic droughts and flooding that now dominate the headlines and threaten entire regions.

This report covers innovative... Read more

Hi, a local sustainability not for profit whose board I'm on is considering a vinyl siding collaboration with the Vinyl Sustainability Council, started in 2016 by the Vinyl Institute. There would be some funding to create a program to help recycle siding and a chance to win a full new vinyl cladding. I don't think we should collaborate with... Read more

Not sure if anyone is currently looking to hire someone, but I wanted to pass along info on Bohan Zhang in case anyone might be interested.  Bohan recently graduated from the GSD's MDes Energy and Environment program.  He also has an MArch degree, and I know took a number of courses in Real Estate and Finance at both MIT and Harvard.  I had him... Read more

Greetings Sustainable Design Leaders,

As we begin closing out 2021, we wanted to give you a quick update that the next SDL Salary Survey will be coming to you in early January! The BuildingGreen team and SDL Steering Group have been busy this past month polishing up the questions for this anonymous survey.

A reminder of the... Read more

Hi All,

As of February 1, I’ll no longer be on this Forum as I don’t fit into any of the roles of SDL (yet) and I respect this space as a haven for those who do.  Helping to form this network with Nellie, Jim and Nadav has been a highlight of my career. Its truly exciting to see SDL networks finally expand to other practice areas.  I am... Read more

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

Welcome to the quiz portion of Can Concrete Save Us? Locking Up Carbon in Building Materials

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


1. Explain current strategies of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).
2. Detail how concrete offers another possible pathway to... Read more

Have any of you come across aqueous ozone product for hand sanitation?  https://www.3oescientific.com/

This company is selling to hospitals/schools.  May indeed be awesome, but so many "totally safe" products are proven not to be. Curious if this group has seen it or have looked at it's claims.

Hello SDL Network,

I am working with members of the Seattle AIA COTE in planning an event that we are tentatively calling "Pathways to Decarbonization" or maybe "Decarbonization Success Stories".  The idea is for the COTE to identify entitities (school districts, local governments, higher-ed institutions, corporations, etc.) that have... Read more

Many of you have heard me speak of our foundations effort to host a conference in Houston this November that is focusing on the social and economic side of community resilience preparedness. While we purposely are emphasizing these topic areas, we do see the importance of these conversations being witnessed by the design and planning community... 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