Design & Construction process
Lightning Round: Questions and Answers to Fuel Your Work
This Lightning Round will pack as much information into one session as possible, with succinct, practical presentations on a variety of topics including B-corp; Iterative Daylighting Analysis Tools; Aerial Thermal Imaging, 3D Modelling and Orthographic mapping; EcoFAST.
Real Life Air Source Heat Pumps
Learn about cold climate heat pumps from an expert in HVAC and Building Science. This session will focus on the real world performance of Air Source Heat Pumps monitored from past projects, including the presenter’s own house. We’ll discuss a range of heat pump applications, installation practices that affect efficiency, and some key issues and resources to consider when specifying and sizing heat pumps. After attending this session, practitioners who use this technology will know how to use it better. If you have questions about Heat Pumps, bring them with you! There will be time for Questions and Answers.
The Risky Business of Integrative Pre-Design
The status quo of traditional project delivery requires continual review and improvement. Although the value of the Integrative Design Process (IDP) has been established, it is not widely used or fully embraced. Even its most ardent supporters make mistakes in timely team engagement and short-circuited design process, often lacking a clear path to project completion. Despite these challenges, Integrative Pre-Design empowers early collaborative and iterative techniques critical to creating ultra-high performance buildings. This session will focus on the value of Integrative Pre-Design as a vital component in the IDP process. Following ANSI guidance principles, we will reinforce the basic concepts and principles of IDP and highlight how IDP provides a means to effectively explore and implement sustainable design principles on a project.
Choices, Choices: Cladding and Climate Change
Architects, designers, builders and facility managers are often in the dark about environmental and especially climate change impacts as they look at exterior material choices for new construction, cyclical recladding, and overcladding. Cost and appearance are important parameters that usually drive the final choice. Cladding materials used in construction are critical to carbon reduction goals and loom larger as operational energy use diminishes. This session will provide tools, rules of thumb, and sources of information and will look at methodologies available to sort through climate impacts of cladding choices in North American residential and commercial markets.
Multi-Family, Tenant-in-Place, Passive Rehab: It's Possible!
Affordable housing offers a huge opportunity to refinance and rehab to the Passive House standard. The project team from Chris Benedict, R.A. and RiseBoro Community Partnership will show construction details from their ground-breaking tenant-in-place rehab project designed for Passive House. CBRA will discuss the construction challenges (and successes!) to date, and RiseBoro will outline the financing and development approaches that should motivate all stakeholders to pursue this path.
Green Gauges: A Design Methodology at Williams College
Williams College has established the goal of 35% campus wide carbon reduction of 1990 carbon emissions by 2020. In this session we will present the development of a methodology (i.e., Green Gauges) for design and construction teams to communicate strategies with the owner early in the process, and to provide consistent information regarding operational energy and the resulting carbon savings. What is the cost per metric ton of avoided carbon over the operation life of that strategy? We’ll find out.
Thermal & Energy Analysis for Architects: Why, When, & How
Incorporating quantitative tools throughout each stage of the design process empowers architects to evaluate and understand the complex environmental implications of their design decisions and to make deliberate, informed choices. We will discuss the rapidly expanding arsenal of tools available to designers, including energy modeling, thermal modeling, LCA, and solar analyses. The presentation will focus primarily on how to deploy thermal and energy modeling early in the design process for both preservation and new construction projects.
Big Building Implications for Multifamily Passive House
This session will focus on applying Passivhaus/Passive House standards to large buildings: recent research on the impacts of tall buildings, from architectural enclosure detailing, mechanical systems, zoning, code, marketability, and constructability; and optimal management of internal loads.
Comparing the Business of Architecture to Construction to Development
What do People and Planet decisions cost, what are they worth, and how do they affect our employees, our neighborhoods, our planet? Declan Keefe, Strategic Director of Placetailor, an architecture, construction and development company, will share some of Placetailor’s live company budgeting spreadsheets, development proformas and sample projects.This session offers an analysis of the business models of Architecture, Construction, and Development. We examine the similarities and differences of how each type of business functions, how design-build, architect as developer, builder as developer, and designer-builder developer models might impact the bottom line of a business or project. Once we understand the levers available to us that affect the "Profit" bottom line, we’ll consider how to invest in the “People” and “Planet” bottom lines.
New or Renovated - High Performance in Education
Do you want to hear how to drive energy efficiency in renovation projects and new buildings beyond expectations? Welcome. Our exceptional panel members have learned from many educational projects including high energy intensive science facilities.
"But I Don’t Care" (Being an Effective Communicator)
Overcoming resistance and gaining buy-in are challenges faced by everyone. The education of design professionals rarely includes the critical skills of communication and negotiation. We can and should learn these valuable skills that make us more successful and less frustrated: skills that support all aspects of our life, sustainability in particular.
New Construction: Beyond Modeling to Real Data & Results
This session will compare energy-modeled results to actual utility consumption data from a set of multifamily buildings, discuss results of recent energy audits, and examine major design elements: envelope, HVAC, renewables.
Signal to Noise: What Engineers See and You Miss in Products Specs
A spec sheet can be baffling. We want to make smart choices but have trouble discerning what matters and what doesn’t. Two experienced engineers will walk us through reading spec sheet data. We’ll learn what they look for and why.
The Not-Quite-Edible House: Making Healthy Material Choices
This session outlines key strategies to help your team make informed decisions around building assemblies, products, and finishes. Whether you’re looking for simple, low-cost upgrades for a remodeling project or building new for a client with allergies or chemical sensitivities, you’ll walk away with new ideas to put into practice.
The BrightBuilt Barn 10-year Anniversary: Celebrating the Birth of Affordable, Off-Site-Built Net Zero and the Industry Change It Spawned
In 2006, a group of industry leaders collaborated on an ideal for the future of homebuilding in the Northeast, focusing on affordability, sustainability, replicability, and beauty. Their project, the BrightBuilt Barn, won the LEED Innovative Project Award in 2008 and has been net-positive ever since.
Lunch and Learn: Getting Better at Getting Better - Lean Thinking for Residential Construction
When compared with conventional, code-built homes, the builders of high performance homes are at a disadvantage right out of the gate. Our homes tend to cost more because we use high quality materials and craft them into complex assemblies that require uncommon care, knowledge and precision to execute successfully.
Getting to Net Zero: The Nitty Gritty of the Tools and the Steps
This interactive workshop will engage participants in a hands-on working session to explore tools that effectively utilize metrics, benchmarks, and tracking of actual energy data in order to inform project goal setting and integrated design strategies for net zero and net zero ready buildings. Presenters will demonstrate a process to evaluate and successfully demonstrate cash flow positive financial investments in net zero and net zero ready buildings.
Creating Successful Energy Models
Energy modeling is a valuable tool in the green builder’s toolbox. It is a requirement of many energy codes and green building certification programs, and may also be used to earn tax credits and utility incentives. But their most valuable role is as a decision making tool for building designers.
ZNE High Performance Schools
Designing and building Zero Net Energy (ZNE) schools is more than just a lofty goal – it’s an increasingly viable necessity. Saving the planet is no easy feat, but by incorporating ZNE into high performance building plans with streamlined paths toward achievement, we can start working now for a healthier tomorrow. Join us to learn how the education sector is leading the market in zero energy buildings and the aggressive goals around these extremely high performing buildings.
Evolving Assemblies
We know. You want to geek out about clever construction details and cutting edge construction methods, and in the process perhaps learn some strategies that you can bring back and apply to your own work. Well then, this is the session for you.
Getting Real About Renewables: Passive House and the Future of Energy
The growth of renewable energy is a hopeful and positive sign for society. It is not merely a fuel switch, however; it is a disruptive technology that is revolutionizing the fundamental economics of the grid itself. As fossil-fuel “storage” is supplanted by intermittent renewable energy, peak load is transitioning from demand-driven to supply-driven, and shifting the focus from “energy” to “power."
Mind the Gaps: Post-Occupancy Discoveries from Design to Operation
Vanderweil has piloted post-occupancy review to determine how buildings are used and discovered that gaps in installation, operation, and maintenance, which can result in excess energy and resource use, may be avoidable. Post-occupancy evaluation requires a small investment but yields results that can help alleviate owner issues with controls, circulation, and operational strategy.
Integrative Design Process (for real): Mapping Your Delivery Process
Most firms claim to practice integrative design, but that’s not reliably the case! With LEED’s new “IP” credit and increased demand for NZ buildings, it’s time to get real. Transforming the design process is not simply adding a kick-off charrette – it’s a systemic transformation that even can help overcome the typical dysfunctional dynamics between architects and engineers. In this roll-up-your-sleeves session, participants will dig in, deconstruct what they do on a “typical” project, and “ReDesign” the future to achieve a desired performance outcome. Participants leave with actionable items to put into practice immediately.
Getting to Yes: Winning and Making Your Next Project Net Zero, LBC, or . . .
We know how to design and construct net-zero and living buildings that are healthy, responsible, beautiful, durable and financially prudent. So why aren’t clients demanding this? How can we clearly demonstrate that this is in their best interest?