Good Morning,  I have so enjoyed reading everyone’s personal introductions.  I am happy to be a part of this group and look forward to working together to create transformation of an industry that is sometimes slow to move.  My name is Patty Lloyd and I am the Sustainability Manager at Leopardo Companies, a Chicagoland area General Contractor... Read more

I'm working on convincing my firm to hire a director of sustainability. I'm gaining some traction with the discussion thanks to the fantastic feedback and input from the summer summit "Role of the Sustainable Design Leader" breakout session. Thanks everyone! Does anyone have job descriptions for sustainable design leaders that they'd be willing... Read more

Hi all,

The USGBC Pacific Region is launching a new award this year that recognizes projects that have aspires to promote health of occupants and surrounding communities.  In true USGBC style, this award has not been properly publicized, so they are still looking for submissions.  I believe the deadline will be extended to June 7.  I... Read more

Hello all, excuse the blast and the short timeline -- while not explicity sustainability-related, this is a great way to connect with the future of the profession, and can be a great opportunity for SDL firms on the west coast (a number of SDL firms already participate), specifically in Tacoma, Olympia, San Francisco, Sacramento, or San Diego.... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of 20 Ways to Advance Sustainability in the Next Four Years!

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


Identify the challenges to green building during a time of environmental urgency and political unrest, and find opportunity in these challenges.

... Read more

Hi SDL,

I'm heading to Greenbuild next week and one of my teammates who's not attending has asked me to look for expo hall vendors who are involved in Design for Freedom. He's starting up a new project that he thinks could be a good DFF pilot and wants to get some manufacturer contacts. Is there any kind of informal DFF meetup happening... Read more

Hi there colleagues!

Out of curiosity, do you plan on attending Greenbuild in person in San Diego in September? My staff asked me if we were going and my answer is partially contingent on the extent to which attending would mean getting to see some of our favorite people (read: all of you). Looking forward to taking the temperature of... Read more

I'm sure if I hop in the way back machine I could look in the forums and find old threads on LEED GA and LEED AP study resources, but I also know that material comes in and out of date. Has anyone found a good, current solution for firmwide LEED study materials?

We used to have some GBES resources, but those are intended to be person-... Read more

For questions and/or to be added to the Summer Summit waiting list, please email Jerelyn Wilson directly.

2019 Summer SDL Summit
Islandwood, Bainbridge Island, WA
July 31st- August 2nd, 2019

Hi all - I’m wondering if any of you have heard of or use the National Green Building Standard, which appears to be primarily for residential and mixed use: https://www.homeinnovation.com/green.

The NGBS Green certification program is based on the ICC-700 National Green Building Standard and supposedly is the program of choice for many... Read more

Hi all, are there requirements to include/submit backup documentation to the CC excel template? Or is it just the template itself that gets submitted? The question is coming up from our leadership over what documents are public vs internal.

Hi All,

Has anyone dug into ASHRAE 2016 as part of the new v4.1 requirements or as codes start to adopt it? I recently presented on this and thought I should check my math to make sure I'm understanding and communicating this correctly.

My understanding is that there is a new reference baseline, that is essentially the ASHRAE 2004... Read more

We have an MEP engineer that is calculating peak loads at about 6 times passive house levels on a large commercial building that is at or near passive house levels of insulation and air infiltration. We suspect one reason is that he is figuring a 50% efficiency level for the ERV. We are showing him ERV systems with 80-90% efficiency, but they... Read more

Happy Thursday, all!

I will be presenting with my colleague, Emily Hoffman, and our counterpart from Seattle, Duane Jonlin, on how firms can contribute more to aggressive energy and carbon targets, from the perspective of three people that see thousands of projects each year.  We see the best and the worst, and we're convinced that our... Read more

If only a few of the Best Practices will have checklists, which will be included under the "Implementation Toolkit" tab, I'm thinking we can simplify them (compared with LEEDuser).

I've attached a screenshot of a LEEDuser checklist. But I don't think BITuser will need the four types of icons, and the legend will take up more space than... Read more

We had these conversations grouped by size of firm. 

Guiding Questions:

Knowledge Management By Firm Size

How to give people the info they need, when they need it?

Is the COTE Top Ten a good framework?

This seems extremely daunting in a large firm. How do we manage content that is produced and shared... Read more