Championing the
Changemakers

Hi Everyone!

I'm Lauren Shumaker and I'm a Project Manager/Sustainability Manager with Turner Construction.  As a long standing advocate for healthy and sustainable building materials, I look forward to expanding my ability to promote material transparency and shine a greater light on our ability to positively impact human and... Read more

Our fledgling group had an organizing call last Tuesday, March 17th. Of course, it was a great conversation - the group is full of amazing people! The focus of our conversation was the goals and actions that should drive this group forward. I have a few ideas. Please share your own in this thread!

I start from the belief that we see our... Read more

Hi All,

We are trying to make a case for hiring a full time sustainability specialist in our firm, and one of the arguments we want to use is that the ratio of sustainability specialists vs the ratio of full time employees in our company is quite low. That being said, I want to have an understanding of where other firms stand with this... Read more

I'm teaching a LEED GA study group and was rambling on the differences between CIR and precident-setting LEED Interpretation (that gets posted in the addenda library and all). Then I went onto LEED Online and was showing how those are submitted... but can't actually figure out how a LEED Interpretation would be submitted. Has anyone done this... Read more

Should the Best Practice names always be accompanied by their number? See the attached screenshots, all taken from the main forum page:

Hi everyone, 

We’re excited to announce that registration for the Spring 2024 Sustainable Construction Leaders Summit is now open! Join us at Perkins&Will’s Atlanta office on May 6th, the day before the Living Future Conference. Register early to save your seat, and feel free to reach out to me with any questions at amanda@... Read more

Hello Green Gurus,

Back at the retreat in March 2021 (does anyone remember back that far?), we formed an Air Quality Working Group with members from SDL, SMEPL, and SCL. Drawing on our collective experience, standards, research, and other resources, we began navigating the murkiness of indoor air quality considerations. We came up with a... Read more

Hi folks,

Some of you have seen me do a 5-minute presentation on an initiative to divert urine from wastewater. That team is now developing a building-scale urine treatment technology with support from the National Science Foundation's Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) award. 

In order to learn more about the sustainable... Read more

Hi - we're working with the University of California Office of the President to put together low-carbon case studies. The two types we are looking for now include 1) a low-carbon TI (not a full building gut/renovation), and 2) any that involve the circular economy (in this case not just building reuse but product reuse) which could include... Read more

Hello SDL Network,

I am working with members of the Seattle AIA COTE in planning an event that we are tentatively calling "Pathways to Decarbonization" or maybe "Decarbonization Success Stories".  The idea is for the COTE to identify entitities (school districts, local governments, higher-ed institutions, corporations, etc.) that have... Read more

Greetings, green gurus:

Is anyone in this group attending the AIA Annual Business Meeting on Wednesday, June 5 at AIA Conference on Architecture in Las Vegas? If you are, and you're a voting delegate from your AIA Chapter, could you support a floor Resolution recommending that the AIA Board take urgent and sustained climate action? My... Read more

Welcome to this practice session for the LEED AP v4 exam, and good luck!

All the exam questions and explanations that follow were authored by Alex Spilger, LEED AP BD+C of GreenStep Education, and are provided in this BuildingGreen "exam simulator" through a special partnership with GreenStep and with our friends at the Poplar Network.... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Changing Building Design Priorities for a Changing Electrical Grid!

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


Define a “Highly Variable Renewable Energy” generation asset, or VRE, and understand how VREs can most effectively contribute to the... Read more

Hans “Grumpy” Grimm

Hi Green Gurus: check out this new series from AIAU that delves into the design and planning application of the 4th National Climate Assessment Report by region with some more recent updates. Free to members...looks like some great speakers and highly relevant. 

https://aiau.aia.org/regional-tour-climate-risk-planning-and-design

... Read more