I am the Moderator of the 2023 Strategic Council and the call for nominations for the 2024-2026 Strategic Council at-large representatives has just been released.  I would encourage any interested parties to apply for this position.

The Strategic Council’s purpose is to develop ideas to inform future needs and opportunities for the... 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

Following up on the Decarbonizing Existing Building: Envelope + MEP Solutions Integrative Design Jam, a cohort of us determined a "Decision Making Tree Toolkit" that begins to classify decisions into and "if/then" framework using region, market, climate, scale of intervention, and other factors would be useful in helping us collectively move... Read more

We are growing our Design Performance Group at NBBJ! We're looking for two special people right now: a senior sustainable material consultant and a senior energy analyst. Help us design the next generation of healthy, low impact buildings - this is a chance to impact across the scale of our global company and build a better future! Know anyone... 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

Welcome to the quiz portion of Finding Products for LEED v4 and v4.1!

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


Following up on one of our conversations on the vision vacuum and sustainability beyond certifications, I would like to help facilitate an offline conversation with anyone working within their firm to use the AIA COTE measures as a guiding framework in their firms/projects. Attached are my slides on my first pass at thinking about this at Page... Read more

Ventilation is essential for indoor air quality, but it can bring very hot or very cold outdoor air into conditioned space.

BuildingGreen-Approved ERVs

Heat-recovery ventilators (HRVs) and energy-recovery ventilators (ERVs) can save energy by capturing nearly all of the heat in the air being exchanged. BuildingGreen approves:... Read more

Hi everyone,

As part of our monthly SDLS call yesterday, we looked through the 2020 SD Leaders Winter Summit Report. To help paint an even fuller picture of what was covered at that summit, here are slides from many of the 5-minute presentations.

As a note: we have permission from these presenters to share their slides within the... Read more

Hi SDLers: ESG Investing is mushrooming which is a very good thing. AIA National, for example, just switched over to 100% ESG investments. With it, there seems to be a growing number of "ESG-lite" options. I'm wondering if anyone among this informed group has recommendations on how to determine a quality investment approach. I'd appreciate any... Read more

Hi folks,

Any of you who have completed WBLCA for projects - we are working on a new initiative with the City of Cambridge (building on our prior work NZ Climate Action Plan) but this time focused exclusively on embodied carbon.

We have not yet begun the work - but they have an opportunity to make a move on this on Tuesday and... 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

All,

Some of my colleagues and I have been working to promote interest in mass timber construction for K-12 builidngs.  As part of that effort we redesigned a large high school using mass timber in lieu steel, and conducted a whole building life cycel assessment to measure the reduction in embodied carbon.  We also conducted a program-... Read more

Hi all,

I'm curious if anyone has insight as to the "New Federal Building Performance Standards" that were announced in May of 2021 and then referenced again when E.O. 14057 came out. The memorandum for heads of agencies that was sent out with E.O. 14057 said that the CEQ would issue these standards, but I can't find a commitment to when... Read more

THIS WEBINAR PURCHASE AND REGISTRATION IS CLOSED.

The new “Contractor’s Commitment to Sustainable Building Practices" calls on firms to practice green building on the jobsite and beyond. But what has really been accomplished during the program's... Read more

Hello all, 

Wondering if anyone has experience with lead limits in electrical cable and wiring? 

LEED for Healthcare allows a limit of 300 ppm of lead in electrical wire and cabling - my search for compliant products has been all dead ends. (MRc PBT Source Reduction - lead, cadmium, and copper)

Acceptable regulations for... Read more