Hi all,

We are taking a deep look at green accreditations within our firm. Gone are the days when we could say: "our staff is XX% LEED APs!" as a metric of firm progress. Here are a few questions we are asking ourselves, and I'm wondering how you approach this in your firms:

Welcome to the quiz portion of Doing Daylighting Right.

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


1. Explain occupants' needs and habits when it comes to daylighting.
2. Recognize at least three recent mistakes in daylighting design and their respective alternatives going... Read more

Friends, I'm helping with the 2023 COTE Top Ten Award and would love some input from this group on 2 things: 

1) Now that the AIA Design Excellence awards use the Framework for Design Excellence as their entry criteria, what do you see as the next gen for the Top Ten? If you could change 1-3 things, what would they be? If you submitted... Read more

They say that Louisianans are often late to the party but enjoy catching up.  The state, which had been stuck on ASHRAE 90.1-2007 (commercial) and IECC 2009 (residential) and has just adopted legislation jumping to IECC 2021 / IRC 2021, and commits to automatic upgrades with each 3-year code cycle.  This means we join CA, OR, WA, MA, and VT--... Read more

As if you weren't worrying enough already, here's a little something that I ran across through monitoring activity on the American Society of Healthcare Engineers discussion boards:  https://www.id-hub.com/2018/10/17/hospital-plumbing-reservoir-resistance-interview-amy-mathers/, "Hospital Plumbing as a Reservoir for Resistance".  This is both a... Read more

Hi all, has anyone come across a comprehensive (and recent) study looking at how long buildings actually last (beyond Stewart Brand)? I know of plenty that look at the benefits of reuse, but none that look at existing building stock and how much has been reused vs. demolished. 

As we start looking at embodied carbon metrics, I can't help... Read more

I’m writing to see who would be interested in collaborating during the month of December on a position paper that would be given to the incoming Biden administration, outlining things that firms in our industries (i.e. architecture, engineering and construction) would be excited to see advanced as part of Biden’s Build-Back-Better (BBB) program... Read more

Hi SD Leaders,

As you may be aware, this past April a group of manufacturers calling themselves the Living Product 50 responded to the letters that many of us sent about five years ago advocating for transparency in their product ingredients.  A copy of that letter can be reviewed about midway through the page at this link:  https://... Read more

Who all is implement 360-degree reviews as part of their employee review process?  Lake|Flato is thinking of implementing this and would like to talk to a few other firms who have experience they would be willing to share.  Please contact me if you'd be up for a short email discussion or phone call to discuss.  hholdridge@lakeflato.com

... Read more

Following the summer SDL summit - we formed a spinoff user group called "Carbon Sync" to discuss Life Cycle and Carbon Assessment tools like Tally and Athena.  We've had three successful calls with folks sharing a couple 5-minute presentations about various studies and explorations.  We have a mix of experience levels - but are collaborating... Read more

This is a bit off the thread of sustainable design leadership, but how much design and/or leadership can you get done without an adequate amount of caffeination?

We are looking for recommendations and advice on improving the sustainability of our breakrooms, particularly on the subject of beverage (mostly coffee, but also a fair amount... Read more

Hello SCL,

Our diligent Contractor's Commitment working group (led by the great Amanda Atkinson) have reviewed a massive amount of feedback and will soon be releasing an updated version of the program (CC 2.0). We will need a majority of the SCL membership to vote YES to adopt the updated version for 2023. 

In advance of the vote... Read more

What’s the net present value of that extra insulation? Join us on Tuesday, June 25th at 2:00 pm Eastern for a Peer Networks webinar on “Balancing Embodied and Operating Carbon.” Bill Smarzewski and Jason Fierko of Ewing Cole have developed a method for combining energy modeling with embodied carbon data to determine the carbon “payback” of... Read more