Dear SD Leaders: The comment period closes January 31st on  NCA Volume II Climate Change Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States.

It's important to have the design communities perspective on these critical issues. I hope you can take a look and submit your comments before the deadline.

Details here: https://www.... Read more

As promised at the SDL Summer Summet: Hennepin County Energy & Environment's new Project Manager’s Guide to Material Reuse in Commercial Buildings, with specification language, guidance for procurement, and case studies of successful reuse projects around the country. This resource is meant to help owners, architects, and contractors... Read more

Hardware has to be durable and resist weathering to ensure that features such as doors function properly.

BuildingGreen-Approved Hardware

BuildingGreen approves hardware that uses post-consumer recycled metal content beyond what is standard in the industry. Products from manufacturers that have engaged in information transparency... 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:


Welcome to the quiz portion of Choosing Insulation: High-Performance Roof Assemblies and Retrofits – Unit 4.

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


1. Explain the industry trajectory of healthier alternatives to foam insulation.
2. Describe the nuances of insulation... Read more

Hello all,

This month's SCDL call was full of great discussion! We decided this month that we are feeling good about where we are for the Task Force Agreement on defining social sustainabiltiy in our work. The aim is to work with this agreement for a while and see if it holds up as a process framework. There was also interest to invite... Read more

Hi SDLers! I hope early fall is finding you well.

There is a current opportunity to make a difference in the campaign to reduce use of toxic flame retardants.

Arlene Blum and the Green Science Policy Institute, whom many of you know, are currently organizing a campaign of support for the CA State Fire Marshal's proposal to allow... Read more

If anyone else has gotten confused going between parts-per-million and percentages (parts per hundred!) for material reporting here's a little infographic that might help. Feel free to use or improve! 

We had these conversations grouped by size of firm. 

Guiding Questions:

Knowledge Management By Firm Size

How to give people the info they need, when they need it?

Is the COTE Top Ten a good framework?

This seems extremely daunting in a large firm. How do we manage content that is produced and shared... Read more

Hey Peer Network! Curious, if we can crowd-source a solution here for the pervious pavers at our Omaha office (climate zone 5A). Apparently over the years we've tried to add different kinds of fill here (gravel) but it keeps... disappearing. Any recommendations with either a replacement product or fill item? 

Hans “Grumpy” Grimm

Hi Everyone - I hope this isn't a repeat topic. We are starting to get familiar with TallyCAT at SAR+ and have a few people testing our projects in it. Is anyone willing to help us troubleshoot or share lessons learned? We're running into a few errors and wonder if our Revit models and workflow are the issue, or if we need to be doing something... Read more

Greetings Gurus!! I'm super excited to invite you all to help each other :)

As many of you know, BuildingEase (a completely free tool!) has been born this year, the newest function we just launched is the Crowdsourcing function.

Crowdsourcing lets anyone contribute products to a public Material List (similar to an Outline Spec)... Read more

Has anyone here been involved (taken or taught sessions) in the Healthy Materials Lab Online Certificate program for Healthier Materials? 

https://healthymaterialslab.org/learning-hub/e-learning-online-certifica...

I'm thinking about having some of our staff take this course, especially those that don't have a background in... Read more

Asking for a colleague:

"Have you ever had a large number of fire retardant tarps used to temporarily enclose a building during construction? Do you know of any solutions for recycling/reusing them or another product that doesn't use toxic fire-retardants that meets the performance criteria?"

I think we've all seen poly or fabric... Read more

Here are the links I mentioned at today's meeting:

Timeline:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1RlN4t23uvBtxEzp4QuyqL-w5bqmE4P90...

BG Contacts and Responsibilities:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MWYuAEitjk7Zpc8KUNf1LwG3-5wK6sIlgwro...

BITuser Contacts and Responsibilities:
https://docs.google.... Read more

Prefabricated, or modular, buildings can provide environmental advantages over conventionally constructed buildings. They are built in factories where manufacturing and cost can be tightly controlled, so materials are kept out of the elements, there is less waste, and thermal properties and air sealing can be enhanced. There are also fewer... Read more