Hello good people and fabulous troublemakers,

PFAS is in everything. In May, the NY Times published an article about this, along with the governments work to remove it from drinking water. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/climate/six-things-to-know-about-forever-chemicals.html

As you may know, a working group has been gathering... Read more

There has been a lot of discussion re antimicrobials in this group, so here is a pre-release of this month's article on the topic. It's not an extensive feature, but I hope you find it informative.

Brent

Hi All, 

Not sure if this is the right location for this (as I'm a new member) but we're Planning the upcoming Water Conservation Showcase in Northern CA. Some details below

The Water Conservation Showcase brings together water, energy, and green building professionals to amplify and discuss innovative water management solutions... Read more

Are your firms discussing the health effects of silica dust on people working with engineered stone and the recent announcement of the upcoming ban in Australia, as of July 2024?

https://www.dezeen.com/2023/12/14/australia-bans-engineered-stone-silico...

According to the article, a recent report says that there is no safe level of... Read more

Hello everyone. I am seeking some guidance on crafting an arguement for why my firm should support a change to the Washington State Energy Code which would mandate electric heat pumps for commercial builidngs.  AIA WA is working on the state commercial energy code update under consideration this spring.  We have been invited to sign on to an... Read more

Plastic windows come in both ABS and vinyl (PVC). Even though PVC is particularly loathed by environmentalists, energy performance is BuildingGreen's primary green consideration for windows, and some vinyl windows offer exceptionally strong energy performance, often with competitive pricing.

BuildingGreen-Approved Plastic Windows

... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of How to Make Integrated Project Delivery Work for Your Project.

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


1. State three problems that Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) promises to solve.
2. Dispel four misconceptions about IPD that have... Read more

Should the Best Practice names always be accompanied by their number? See the attached screenshots, all taken from the main forum page:

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

Auto-quiz used for CEUs for attendees of the 2023 SDL Winter Summit.

Team,

Many of you saw the BlackRock letter.

https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry-fink-ceo-letter

Should we hold our consultants and suppliers accountable for climate change?

Best,
LL

Hi! Over the last 10 years, the firm where I work in Boston has predominately designed housing & senior living projects in the the Boston Metro region, with the occassional project in NH, CT, RI, and NY. We have built projects as far south at DC, but never designed anything to my knowledge in California in our 55 years of operation. A... Read more

All--

I haven't been part of this group in a while, but I'm excited to have rejoined recently. Some of you know that I joined HMC last year as Chief Impact Officer. I oversee design, sustainability, research, and communications for the firm, which has 300 people in 6 offices in California. We were founded in 1940 with a mission to serve... Read more

Do any of you have experience with Design For Freedom yet? It came to my attention and I'm trying to investigate. I would love to hear feedback and experiences that you may have at this point. It seems like an opportune moment for this issue of forced labor (yikes! so much I don't know...) to come to the forefront, and I'm curious to hear how... Read more

Hey team,

I'll go look to see who's in the MEP group, but does anyone in this circle have a northern California design engineer for institutional work that they'd particularly recommend? A group of folks we're engaged with is apparently having difficulty identifying a California-based MEP that everyone universally likes for high-... Read more

Hi Everyone! 

I am building our internal/firm resources around sustainable design, and creating our post-occupancy evaluations is one of those resources. Does anyone have references or resources they'd recommend me to look into for post-occupancy evaluations? So far I am considering a few evalutation types: building user input, building... Read more