Hello Sustainable Design Leaders,

Mark your calendars for an exciting webinar next Wednesday, May 27th, at 2:30pm ET and REGISTER HERE!

Missing the Forest: How forest practices impact the carbon embodied in mass timber projects is a follow-up to last month’s conversation on embodied carbon and mass timber. The presenters will be... Read more

Hi all,

The Sustainable MEP Leaders are assembling an industry push to expand the availability of embodied carbon data for MEP equipment. Our first steps are to send a letter to industry announcing a call to action and future educational webinars on the topic, the current draft letter is attached. In a similar manner as the... Read more

Furnaces heat air that is then distributed through ducting and warm-air registers.

Approved by BuildingGreen

Products approved by BuildingGreen include the highest-efficiency, sealed-combustion furnaces and high-efficiency wood or multi-fuel furnaces. A multi-fuel furnace uses several sources of energy such as wood, wood-pellets,... Read more

Hi All -

I am looking for recommendations for a car charging station for a Catholic convent project we are working on. At this time, the client has requested either 2 charging stations or one station that can charge 2 vehicles. I've been researching chargers and am thinking that it does make sense to specify a commercial-grade charging... Read more

We are cautiously rekindling the age-old debate: how are we balancing modeling software for design /visualization and performance analysis during early phase of design.  

We are heavy SketchUp users for early design, and most of our staff have access to COVE tool for early performance analysis. Problem is, I’d rather use Revit to COVE... Read more

Hi Everyone,

Please mark your calendars for next Tuesday, March 17th, 2020 3pm ET (Noon PT) for an SCL webcast with Mark Chen at Skanska and Emi LaFountain at Turner Construction on Quantifying Jobsite Carbon Emissions. 

Description:

Quantifying Jobsite Carbon Emissions w/ Turner and Skanska
The focus of embodied... Read more

Hi Green Commons,

It’s been eerily quiet here since Tuesday night. I’ve been quiet mostly because I just didn’t know what to say. The election results are certainly a blow to pretty much everything we’ve been working for. There is so much we don’t know about things might play out, but I’m feeling a range of emotions ranging from... Read more

Hi folks,

We're currently scoping out a BuildingGreen report on how the global market for recycled/recyclable materials has changed over the years, and what that means for waste management practices in construction, and for the availability of recycled content materials. 

This ties into the goal from the SCL Summit about LEED... 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

Hello SDLs!

Many of you have internal research groups or internal grants to foster thought leadership in your firms.  We have run an annual research-innovation grant program for about the last 5-6 years.  Anyone in our firm is allowed to apply, submit their idea, the time/budget they need, define a deliverable and then a small group... Read more

Hi folks,

Mahesh announced today that he's leaving his position as CEO of USGBC, GBCI, and ArkScoru, effective Nov. 1. An interim CEO will be announced tomorrow.

I think that Mahesh did some great things for the organization(s)--and he had some really loyal team members. He could also be challenging to work with--as I learned... Read more

Hi SDLers,

We’re really looking forward to connecting with many of you in a few weeks for the Summer Summit. Those of you who have registered are now actively helping to set the agenda--as always, it will be filled with rich conversations and connections.

For a range of reasons--new patterns due to the pandemic, the economy, your... Read more

Hi all,

We're doing some tool-related soul searching at WRNS and some folks here have raised Cove.Tool as a potentially interesting addition to our library. I'm looking for any insight you all can provide. Cove has come up various times, but curious if there's been any change for the better/worse in the past few years.

Do you use... Read more

Anyone else having this experience? We've got a LEED 2009 Core/Shell project that we've now been contracted to do a fitout within for one of the first tenants. If anyone else has had this experience and is willing to talk with me about how your process for it has gone, I'd be fantastically grateful.

Find me directly at awilson@asg-... Read more

I had a client ask recently if there is a 'better' global social justice tool than ILFI's JUST for use outside the U.S. 

Personally, I'd look to WELLv2 feature C12 - Organizational Transparency for other options... but personally have very limited knowledge of options c-e.

Do folks have an opinion on if any of these prograams are... Read more

Hello SMEPers,

I’m hoping to crowd source some anecdotes for a guest lecture I’ll be giving at Yale’s architecture school. The topic is integrated design (especially between architects and engineers) and how it enables better sustainability outcomes.

John Boecker has this great story about how choosing a paint color with higher... Read more

Glazing connects occupants to the outdoors, but with so many opportunities for air leakage, poor insulation, and thermal bridging, glazing is the primary weak link in building energy performance.

BuildingGreen approves glazing that offers strong energy performance properties for a variety of... Read more