For anyone attending this year's APA conference in person in San Diego, please consider joining us for our divison's annual reception and Awards for Excellence in Sustainability. We will be joined by members of the City Management & Planning, New Urbanism divisions, and the National Capital Area Chapter. Here's a link to register for the... Read more

I can see from the threads that there are at least a few Passive House advocates in this group - I'm wondering about the PHIUS training and certification. Can any who have done it offer an opinion? Is it valuable? Residentially focused? Would it apply to someone in a larger commercial practice? It's an investment of time and $, so I really want... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Take Control of Your Materials: Four Empowering Lessons from Teams That Beat the Red List.

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


1. Customize a framework to prioritize goals and simplify complex material decisions.
2. Use a red-list... Read more

Hello, All,

Does anyone have experience with cove.tool (https://covetool.com/)?  Perhaps for those projects that may not get fully modeled, or as a tool to help set baselines?  It came across our radar recently, and I'm wondering if the subscription might be worth a try.

Thanks! 

Maria

Hi folks,

The team at DPR Construction has kindly agreed to host a reception and evening of presentations during the AIA Conference in San Francisco. If you'll be in the area, come join us Wednesday, June 7 from 6:00–8:30 for networking and fast-paced sharing of ideas.

The plan is to have a networking reception from 6:00-7:00,... Read more

Team,

https://www.buildingservicesengineersdeclare.com/

See link above, a group of UK building services (MEP) engineers (like us) signed on above, committed to do life cycle carbon (including embodied MEP) in their work.

Are we behind?  Should we match them?  leap frog ahead of them?

Best,

Luke Leung

There are a few spots left for the 2018 Summer Architecture + Design Sustainable Design Leaders Summit that is being held August 1-3 at the Garrison Institute in Garrison, NY (Easy train ride from NYC). If you have not already received an invitation, and you play a sustainability leader role - either formal or informal - in a mid-sized (>40... Read more

SDLers – For one of our projects we are working with local tribes to procure timber. We would also like to get FSC certification, but haven’t found significant overlap between these two criteria in the Pacific Northwest. There appear to be two certification entities in our area: Northwest Natural Resource Group and Trout Mountain Forestry.  I’m... Read more

HGA is collaborating with the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership (MCAP) to research how the AE industry is currently using climate projection data, and what they need in order to grow their use of data. MCAP is currently producing a set of dynamical downscaled climate projections for the state of Minnesota and unlike other... Read more

Hi all,

Just wanted to put a couple of useful webinars on your radars if you haven't heard of them yet:

#1: The Contractor’s Role in Quantifying and Reducing Embodied Carbon: Why, What and How

This webinar will provide an overview of what a contractor's role is towards embodied carbon reductions, and how two General... Read more

Welcome to the Sages forum! Some of us have been hanging out together for ages, but others might be new to this group (if not to sustainable design/construction). So let’s start by introducing ourselves, with some highlights from our career and history with the Peer Networks, and why we’ve now joined this one.

My career history is pretty... Read more

Calling all Sustainable Design Leaders - Coming up on March 1st, we’re hosting a virtual SDL check-in. We’ll have a round of five-minute presentations as well as a refresh of the SDL Steering Group.

Quick point of clarification: For those who’ve been around for a while, you may remember this group as the “SDL Regional Leaders”. As we’ve... Read more

Hello all, there has been a fair amount of discussion about the emerging Cove Tool for early stage energy modelling and parametric optimization at our firm. I am very curious if any of you are using this software, and if so, what are your thoughts about it? 

https://www.covetool.com/

Thanks,

Esteban Matheus

Hi SD Leaders: I'm writing to get your help identifying any experts or projects where all-electric HVAC solutions are being implemented in a large new build healthcare/patient care setting. The client has raised concerns about the reliability of an electric re-heat system and its ability to promptly respond to temperature controls. They also... Read more