Hello All!  My firm is looking to hire a sustainability coordinator to help advance our sustainable initiatives at our firm. This will be a new position for our firm.  Does anyone have a job description, roles/responsibilties, and task list that they would be willing to share with me?  Or if you serve in this role at your firm, I'd love to chat... Read more

SDL Show & Tell in Chicago, Tuesday, November 13 from 7-9:30 PM (CST)
HKS | 125 S Clark Street | Chicago, IL 60603

What better way to kick off your time at Greenbuild than with snap previews of the best sessions? The Sustainable Design Leaders Show & Tell is back, brought to you by BuildingGreen and HKS! This event is by... Read more

Hey everyone,

This is a quick note to say I am retiring at the end of this month and will be taking a hiatus from the SDL group. I will no longer be practicing architecture, but I will remain active in efforts to preserve the wonders of this world for future generations.   

To all my SDL sisters and brothers (I don't always sound... Read more

So nice when nice happens to nice people.   And smart ones too!  Congrats to Sarah Gudeman, Blake Stanton, Stanton Stafford, Kathy Wardle, and everyone else in this year's class.

https://www.gbci.org/green-business-certification-inc-celebrates-2021-cl...

Little things make a big difference in MEP systems. Pumps, fans, ducts, and dampers are at the heart of performance.

BuildingGreen-Approved HVAC Accessories

We approve the best-in-class products in each category, including:

I'm happy to let you know that Barbra Batshalom has joined the Green Gurus forum!

Many of you already know her from her Sustainable Performance Institute work, and from the great workshop she and her husband Moshe Cohen led before our Boston Summit, but she is also serving a consulting SD Leader for several firms. I'll let her say more... Read more

Hi all, it's time to schedule our next session. Who's in? Ping me at amt@vmdo.com if you want to be considered part of the working group, and fill out your availability on this Doodle poll.

If you just want to monitor what's going on, we'll post updates to the Working Group page. 

The agenda for this call is to figure out what we... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of The Cost of Comfort: Climate Change and Refrigerants!

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


Explain how refrigerants work, the energy challenges they present for design teams, and the opportunities for efficiency and building performance.

... Read more

Sustainability leadership has requested that you take this quiz to help assess sustainability literacy across the firm. Your own results will be presented to you at the end of the quiz but will not be shared with anyone else. Only aggregated, anonymized results will be available to others.

Please don’t do research to inform your answers... Read more

Hello,

We are having a discussion / a bit of a debate in our office about the merits and sustainability of different roofing materials. Our current standard is to use a PVC membrane, which we all know is highly toxic. TPO is an obvious alternative that is less toxic, but it has some performance concerns and can often lead to leaking (not... Read more

This may seem a bit in the weeds, but I have typically paid extra at Greenbuild for the access to the materials after the conference - we use that to develop presentations back to the teams who are not able to attend. For many years it was helpful - getting some materials to help folks see what they missed.  Last year they went to a new service... Read more

In looking for ways to reduce jobsite waste and lower our carbon emissions, I'm working on a business plan for centralized procurement, in lieu of individual project purchasing their own tools, PPE, & consumables.  I'm curious as to how many other GC's on here use (or have used) a central purchasing process and if you have any pros/cons... Read more

Hello SDL Leaders,

Over the past month, I have been working with ILFI to navigate the question of residuals in LBC compliant products vs. products reporting for a Declare label.

Through our conversations, it came to light that ILFI considers the LBC Red List threshold to be 10,000 ppm, rather than the 100 ppm written into the... Read more

Hi Everyone,

Who has worked on a SITES certification and can share the approximate hours involved for administering and completing documentation? A relative sense of the effort compared to LEED would also be helpful, similar to the thread about WELL on this same subject. 

Appreciate any insight. Thanks! -Hilary

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WELL AP Practice Guide - Site License

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Can you comment on successful ways you have used eQUEST and pitfalls you have seen? We are considering training our architects to use it for early building analysis on all projects.