P.J. is an accomplished writer and speaker who brings passion, humor, and discernment to all her work.

Whether it’s a spotlight report on decarbonization, a webinar on ESG, or just a chummy email bulletin, she is ferociously committed to truth, accuracy, and thoroughly... Read more

Hi All, 

My understanding is that SCL reporting is only for refrigerant use, or recharging for headquarters. I've asked our MEP contractor for a list of our 21 units, refrigerant use, and what quantity of refrigerants were used to charge equipment during installation or service.  

Is anyone tracking this for job sites?... Read more

I'm in search of anyone who's done a LEED ACP Pilot Credit. It's unclear to me whether using one of these pathways replaces the way the base prereq or credit would function in the rating system being used by a project seeking certification or if it's a strategy to achieve Innovation in Design credits only. The documentation I've been able to... Read more

Conventional heating systems burn fossil fuels on the building site or use outrageous amounts of electricity.

BuildingGreen-Approved Heat Pumps

The best heat pumps solve both these problems and provide efficient cooling. BuildingGreen approves air-source heat pumps with minimum HSPF and SEER levels of 10 and 20, respectively.... Read more

Hi all,

Due to the eclipse, Nadav and I will be out on our usual call day, April 9th, and we anticipate others may as well. We will be moving the call to Tuesday April 16th at the usual time (2-3pm ET). For this meeting, we'll be holding a whiteboard session about MEP2040, the development of plans to achieve it, and tactics to getting... Read more

Our specification team is currently piloting and testing new software to replace E-specs without an easy favorite, and would really love to know what other firms are using.

First question - what software does your firm use for specifications and why?

Second question - would you/your specifier be willing to chat with ours about it... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Choosing Insulation: Health and Environmental Considerations – Unit 1.

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


1. Discuss how insulation works.
2. Summarize how insulation performance is measured and reported.
3. Recount the wide... Read more

Hi all,

I wanted to reach out to fellow MEP energy modeling teams to assess everyone's experience with the new PCI calculation methodology in 2016. It was a substantial change in how we show savings on projects. Big changes can often come with un-intended consequences. I'm all for pushing to higher efficiency - just want to make sure we... Read more

Hi everyone,

We're hoping to do some building monitoring as part of Building Use Evaluations on our built work, starting with projects in East Africa, to ensure they are performing as intended and to keep supporting our partners. Ultimately we want to be able to log light, noise, temperature, humidity and CO2 concentration. This does not... Read more

The Resilient Outcomes Working Group grew from a session at the 2020 Winter Summit in Gulf Shores AL, and we are still going strong.  We are currently focused on three primary objectives: 1) bringing awareness to resilient design through a presentation at the GreenBuild 2024 Resilience Summit (we'd love to see some peer network friends at our... Read more

I see that the Architect 50 questions this year are organized around AIA 2030 Commitment reporting. I have a question about how people are answering them. The DDX reports have percentages that are by GSF. Are people using this percentage to answer the questions? Or are you calculating the percentage based on number of projects out of total... Read more

Our firm is looking into our hiring process with JEDI objectives and looking for examples that have been successful. Just like any other firms, we utilize career fair opportunities from local Universities, we have scholarship & endowment programs for several institutions, which became a major pipeline. We are working on evaluating all... Read more

Hi all,

AGC is the biggest umbrella organization for general contractors in the states. To date, there has been practically no interaction between the SCL and AGC. In my mind, the SCL group is the most knowledgeable group of dedicated sustainability professionals out there; so is there a way that we can partner with AGC to collaborate ... Read more

We are attempting to use Tally on a couple projects and are wondering how others are using the tool in their design process. If any experienced users out there would be willing to have a brief phone conversation I would appreciate it. Thanks