No real point here, but I couldn't resist...
I tried really hard to track down the company listed, "Second Site Systems" and came up short, but I think they now operate under the CU-Phosco Lighting brand. Clearly they craft only finest quality product.
via Annietown.
My firm has a new LEED project that I've been asked to help plan a startup charrette, a first for me (though I've participated in a few others). After noticing google mostly just references you to firms providing LEED charrette facilitation services, I thought it would be helpful to compile a list of resources that I found useful in my planning. ...A boring post to be sure, but a necessary one all the same. If you have no idea what I'm talking about right now, I recommend starting with this EDC article that serves as a great intro to the concept.
By far the most comprehensive and useful resource I've seen is the Whole Building Design Guide's resource page for charrettes, which led me to a free copy of the NREL's 116 page Handbook for Planning and Conducting Charrettes for High Performance Projects. Between these two resources you can probably figure out 99% of what you'll need to do.
Case Studies and Sample Agendas
A quick plug for the fine folks at Delta
This has absolutely nothing to do with the content above, but I crafted this post using my laptop and free (trial) in-flight wifi!!! I'm somewhere over Oklahoma the first leg of my Greenbuild supertrip as we speak...
I'll be leaving on Friday for a whirlwind tour of the west coast and whatever you would call the Arizona/Nevada region (the Census calls it West-Mountain Division?). By Tuesday of next week, I'll be at GREENBUILD in Phoenix, and will be blogging as fast as I can on the frustratingly small keyboard of my new netbook (expect more typos than normal)... I thought I'd give you dear readers my thoughts on what to attend, and I'd love to see some comments from locals about places I need to see in San Diego, Las Vegas, and of course Phoenix.
The Sights
Frankly, I don't know jack about Phoenix, so if you're looking for sightseeing and or dining options I'm not the guy you want to be talking to... Greensource was smart enough to ask a bunch of locals, mostly architects (including one guy who eschews the "III" suffix at the end of his name in favor of a "3"... I sincerely hope to meet Mr. DeBartolo, 3 during my travels), though those of you who don't wear black all the time can see the thoughts of a community organizer and ArchRecord Editor. In general there seems to be enough fodder and pretty pictures on that sight to allow me to skip any further research on this subject.
If you haven't booked a hotel yet... good luck! There's nothing left that I could find within walking distance of the convention center, but I was able to find a few hotels near the new light rail line.
The Sessions
So... I've finally registered for my sessions at Greenbuild (note: some things are already at the wait-list stage... do it today if you haven't already!), and I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed to see that everything except for the master speaker sessions and specialty updates are panel discussions... There's a time and a place for those, but I wish a few of these session topics would go into the depth and detail that only a single speaker or more formal lecture can deliver. In any case, there's clearly boatloads of talent worth seeing.
Official schedule info can be found here. In general, you have the option for paying for tours or workshops in place of the sessions included in your registration, and everything I'm going to discuss focuses on the 'free' sessions. Here's my schedule and other sessions I'd like to see if I could be two (or in some cases four) places at once. Sessions in bold are the ones I plan to attend.
Tuesday
I get to Phoenix in the late evening, but those around earlier may want to head to the Expo Hall grand opening that starts at 5:30 after checking in. After that there's a party from the folks at GreenGuard that starts at 8:00 off-site at a pub called Coach and Willies, but I'm not sure if that's invite-only or open to the public... the evite I got wasn't exactly clear.
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
The Summary
Yeah... There's some stuff going off Friday afternoon and Saturday, but I'm going to be in VEGAS... dolla, dolla bill, y'all!!! I have no clue how many readers will be out there, but feel free to say hey if you see me... That's me on the left, though as that's a work profile photo I'll likely look much more comfortable and have less hair...
The firm I work at has been involved in an affordable housing project seeking LEED-Homes certification for a few months now, and until this morning I was largely uninvolved. Today though I was asked to run through the checklist and start to figure out who does what. Here's what I've learned so far:
Now, it's important to understand that our consultants and review team have already done a significant amount of work coordinating the design already, but from a pure documentation standpoint I can't get over how user-friendly this process is. Thanks for indulging my raves... I don't gush very often, but we need to figure out how to make the other LEED systems this simple to use while maintaining their rigor. I don't have an answer for that, but given the litany of issues I've faced recently surrounding project boundaries, I can say for sure a quick call to the review team would likely solve hours worth of headaches. Get on it guys!
At work I'm frequently tasked with providing empirical support for sustainable design strategies for clients who may be on the fence or don't really understand what this LEED thing is all about. Over the next few months I'm going to be providing what I've found to be some of the most convincing arguments. Today we begin with an excellent new study out of California (go figure)...
A joint CBRE and University of San Diego study examining the impact of LEED and Energy Star buildings on occupant productivity provides an excellent argument for sustainable design that a CEO could understand that isn't based on expected utility savings... a rare study indeed! Even more interesting, the study provides a strong argument for a more comprehensive concept of sustainability, one including indoor environmental quality efforts in particular, by showing how LEED projects far surpass Energy Star buildings with regard to reduced absenteeism.
Summarizing the Old
Documentation of the economic benefits of indoor environmental quality measures have been few and far between, and the best part of this study is that it does an excellent job of succinctly laying out what previous research has already determined:
Exposing the New
What CBRE and USD added to this investigation is a survey of 154 buildings holding over 2,000 tenants in office environments spread across the nation. 99.5% of respondents reported equal or increased productivity in LEED or Energy Star labeled environments, and 90% reported equal or reduced absenteeism. Here is the quote that I found most interesting:
“The 10% that reported more sick time after moving were in Energy Star-labeled buildings and not LEED certified. It appears that they suffer what often happens to new buildings when ventilation systems are not kept clean or VOCs are not eliminated from new construction materials and finishes… we should emphasize that these are not LEED buildings.”
The bottom line: if you want to harness all of the benefits of a sustainable building, you cannot focus on energy efficiency alone! So just what are those benefits from an economic standpoint?
Of those reporting increased productivity, the average productivity increase was 4.88%, resulting in an annual benefit of $5,204 per worker. When considering LEED only buildings, the average impact was 5.24% ($5,588).
via BEPI
The other day I stumbled upon a wonderful database of ergonomic information from Cornell while looking into some workstation design issues. One of their resources is a description of the requirements to achieve an Innovation in Design (IDc1) credit (or Innovation in Operations credit (IOc1) for LEED-EB) for good ergonomic design.
Included on the Cornell page are a worksheet and a survey based on supplementary guidance from the USGBC describing an approved method for achieving this point. Really though all that is required is "the development and implementation of “a comprehensive ergonomics strategy that will have a positive impact on human health and comfort when performing daily activity for at least 75% of Full Time Equivalent building users”. See the Cornell page for more guidance.
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Thanks to our good friends at Harvard and the University of California, there are full sets of LEED documentation available for LEED-NC, LEED-CI, and LEED-EB projects!
