Hey everyone, HNY!

I'm looking for help in vetting the sustainability cred of uPVC polymer window systems, specifically as an altnerative to traditional PVC vinyl frames. We recenly had a presentation from Intus Windows, who claim that their uPVC frame systems have a low-toxicity profile and excels in performance for thermal efficiency,... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of How To Run a Great Workshop: 37 Tips and Ideas.

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


1. Explain how the right mindset contributes to a successful design workshop.
2. Schedule a design workshop, set its agenda, and balance the skills of its... Read more

consider supporting Varun Kohli for AIA Board At-Large seat

If you are a voting delegate for the AIA, please consider casting a vote for my friend and COTE colleague, Varun Kohli, FAIA; he's running for the At-Large seat on the AIA national Board of Directors.

Varun is a former COTE Leadership Group member and he understands... Read more

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:

Exterior paints, stains, and primers—particularly alkyds—can have very high volatile organic compound (VOC) levels and can contain numerous chemicals of concern.

BuildingGreen-Approved Coatings

BuildingGreen lists exterior coatings that meet the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s (SCAQMD) VOC requirements of 50 grams... Read more

I have a client that is very interested in automated shades for a mid-rise multi-family housing project. Do you have any examples of projects that have attempted this? I assume it would involve occupancy sensors and/or an over-rideable default setting dependant on sun position and temperature. I also have an MEP Engineer team that is having a... Read more

Hi SDL: today is the last day to cast your vote in the voting for Greenbuild by 5PM ET.  

please vote for the terrific program put together on PV23 "The Tools You Need to Design for Climate Emergency Action" with me, Betsy and Beth Heider that will bring together a collection of tools, including brand new ones from Saskia, using the Top... 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

Hi folks,

No details have been sorted out yet, but I wanted everyone to have a heads-up that the SCL Steering Group is proposing that we graduate to a full, stand-alone SCL Summit in 2020. (Until now we’ve been squeezing our Summit into the day before Greenbuild, which is good in some ways, but problematic in others—and limits our time... Read more

Greetings Gurus!
Please sign up and spread the word (even if you can't attend, sign up and get follow up info!)

This is one of a series of Hackathons to crowdsource alternative design details that are intentionally meant for disassembly! The outputs are meant for public consumption so that anyone who doesn't have time (that's... Read more

I know that there is a risk of starting a whole flurry of congrats through the forum, but this is a biggie, and deserves some recognition:

Congratulations Andrea and Melanie!! Huzzah!!

And a reminder--If you want to reach out to them privately, rather than through the forum, with your message, you can see anyone's email address by... Read more

Sustainability leadership has requested that you take this quiz to help assess sustainability literacy across the firm. Your own results will be presented to you at the end of the quiz but will not be shared with anyone else. Only aggregated, anonymized results will be available to others.

Please don’t do research to inform your answers... Read more

Hi all, 

I'm excited to announce that LHB (my 250-person multidisciplinary firm located in Minnesota and Wisconsin) is hiring a full-time Regenerative Design Leader. I thought this might be helpful for those of you looking for example job descriptions for your own postings, or if you are looking to make a move (we do have an office in... Read more

Hey All,

I just received this from AIA MA. How fantastic would it to have a bunch of Green Gurus on the ICC Development Team! Is anyone on here already on it?

From AIA MA:
The International Code Council (ICC) is now accepting applications to serve on the Code Development Committees to develop the 2024 editions of the... 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

Happy Friday all! 

Arizona's USGBC's Fall Summit is coming up on October 5th and we are looking for another GC to speak on our 'Waste Diversion in Arizona Construction' panel. 

Here is the link to the event: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/usgbc-arizona-fall-summit-2023-tickets-6776...

It's going to be a great event starting... 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