IES Blog

 Well not really, but it’s potentially been usurped.  The GBCI unveiled the new three tiered LEED-AP program last year, and since then, those in the building profession world have been waiting to see how the market responds to figure out what to do next.  Myself included.  I’ve finally buckled down and figured out what I should do and I thought I’d share my process with you.  Here’s the CliffNotes version.

First, I had to figure out what’s what in the world of LEED-AP with this latest tiered program. 

• Pre May 2009, there was simply LEED AP.
• The new version keeps the LEED AP, now known as LEED-AP without Specialty or Legacy LEED AP.
• LEED Green Associate: usually students or manufacture representatives.
• LEED-AP with Specialty (i.e. LEED-AP BD+C): core exam for those who work on LEED projects. 
• LEED Fellows: are the gurus and the exam has yet to be created.

Here’s my frankensteined diagram trying to explain this:

Second, I figured out what options I had.  When I took the exam eons ago, there was one exam.  The choices were:
1. Take the LEED-AP exam
2. Don’t take the LEED-AP exam

Over time it has grown more complicated, not to mention more expensive and there’s more paperwork. (Click Image to open PDF)

** All dates are based on my personal Enrollment Window: 10/5/2009 – 10/4/2011.  Check “My Credentials” on www.gbci.org for your dates.

Finally, I came to a decision: I’m waiting.  I’m not convinced the market will require anything more than a LEED AP which I have and will always have.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe we’ll start seeing “LEED AP with specialty” requirements in RFPs.  Maybe I’ll change my mind next summer.  But until then, I’ll forgo the paperwork and save my money.

Check out www.gbci.org for more information.  And if you’re working on LEED projects, your old LEED AP still counts for IDc2.

Next Time:  LEED AP: Continuing Education
LEED AP: What to Study and How to Study.

Tweet This Post

No Comments

Tags:Building, LEED, students

The first paragraph of Philip Wenz’s article, “The Future of Sustainable Design,” doesn’t paint such a pretty picture for those of us involved in commercial building…

“We have entered what I call the Not-So-Great Depression, a double whammy of eco-nomic and ecological crises.”

But it can’t be that bad, can it? I did some digging, and I’m happy to report that there is hope for the future and sustainable design is part of that.

The latest issue of AAMA’s newsletter opened with a note from President and CEO, Rick Walker. He said, “Moving forward in 2010, green building and energy efficiency continue to be buzzwords prevalent within the industry, as well as in economic sectors. Green building has shown itself to be much more than a passing industry trend, but has proven itself both as a movement that has the potential for financial savings, as well as job creation and general stimulus of the economy.”

That’s what I like to see - Green building is much more than a passing industry trend. Green building is a part of our lives, and it’s up to us to take the regulations and requirements and make the best, most sustainable buildings we can.

Another recent example of advancing sustainability is a Top 10 list of green building legislation, pointed to pending bills in the House and the Senate.  Some of these bills include The American Clean Energy and Security Act, The 21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act, The Clean Energy and American Jobs Act, and The American Clean Energy and Leadership Act. These bills are all designed with one goal in mind – a sustainable future.

Tweet This Post

No Comments

Tags:Building, Sustainability

Last week, Consulting-Specifying Engineer, linked to a report containing 111 recommendations to improve NYC building codes.

According to the article, the task force, led by Urban Green Council, “was charged with recommending green changes to the laws and regulations affecting buildings in New York, bringing them to the next level. The 111 recommendations largely impact new construction and renovations.” The full report can be found here.

What is most interesting (and disturbing) is the letter at the beginning of the report.

Buildings in New York City account for nearly 80 PERCENT of its greenhouse gas emissions. More than buses, cars and taxis. And in a city with more than 10,000 cabs alone, the fact that buildings are the largest contributor of greenhouse gases is astounding. But the city is trying. In December 2006, Mayor Bloomberg committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 30 percent by 2030, which will require substantial changes to building infrastructure.

What struck me about this report is that the changes are for buildings old and new. And they don’t have to do with LEED or Architecture 2030, although those benchmarks are an added bonus. This report provides New York City the changes needed to remove impediments to green building practices, ultimately resulting in greener, healthier buildings for all New Yorkers. Let’s see what we can learn from the city that never sleeps.

We will be hosting monthly AIA Continuing Education System- registered training courses at the Center for Architecture in New York City, these courses will be held over two days every month, starting on March 2-3 and 4-5, and will focus on BIM and performance analysis, utilizing IES’ <Virtual Environment> software.

Tweet This Post

No Comments

Tags:Building, Engineers, LEED, reduce

Are you watching closely? Turns out, the new take on the gold, silver and bronze medals is more than just a funky new shape. In an effort to reduce electronic waste, each medal was made with a tiny bit of the more than 140,000 tons of e-waste that otherwise would have been sent to Canadian landfills. And that’s not the only eco-friendly thing about the 2010 winter games.

The Olympic Village in Vancouver has received LEED certification. According to The Vancouver Sun, “The athletes’ village in Vancouver’s southeast False Creek can now be called the greenest community in the North America - possibly the world - Mayor Gregor Robertson said Tuesday morning, as he announced the entire neighbourhood had received a certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.”

Yesterday, “Platinum certification was awarded to the $1-billion, 32-hectare South East False Creek neighbourhood development project based on a variety of factors including its proximity to the downtown core, affordable housing, green buildings and habitat restoration. The Olympic Village is the second development in the world to receive Platinum certification.”

Some of the examples of the design elements of the buildings throughout the athletes’ village are green roofs, cisterns to catch rainwater, passive solar design, upgraded insulation and windows as well as carpets and paint with low or no VOC.

When the announcement was made on Tuesday, USGBC chair Tim Cole called the athletes’ village a “remarkable example” of what is possible.

Lance Hosey, in his Op-Eco blog, looks over the sustainability claims by Olympic organizers that the Vancouver games are “the greenest games ever.” Supposedly, various forms of waste mitigation and energy efficiency will take down the games’ carbon output by 15 percent. But the land-grading methods used to make ski slopes at Whistler are among the most permanently destructive. And, of course, the organizers can’t help it if the air travel involved in bringing people to the games amounts to the annual belchings of 30,000 cars.

Tweet This Post

No Comments

Tags:Awards, Building, LEED, reduce, USGBC

With climate change firmly on the agenda of governments around the world, many countries are looking to invest further nuclear energy as a way to reduce their carbon emissions. This begs the question: should Ireland go nuclear? This simple question can provoke extremely heated debates in Ireland. The last time Ireland considered nuclear power was in the late 1970’s. Thousands of people descended on the proposed site in Carnsore Point in Co. Wexford for week long “protest festivals”. The plans were scrapped. Yes, Chernobyl was one of the biggest human tragedies in history but there is simply no comparison between the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl and a modern nuclear reactor. At the moment Ireland imports a significant amount of electricity from the UK and which has numerous nuclear power stations.

I believe Ireland needs to have a reasonable and logical debate on what our long term energy source will be. Do I believe Ireland should go nuclear? Absolutely not, but in my opinion Irish people are vehemently opposed to nuclear power for all the wrong reasons. Is there a single nuclear power station in Saudi Arabia? Unsurprisingly the answer is no. The Saudi’s sit on the world’s largest oil reserves so they have had no need for nuclear. The west coast of Ireland on the other hand has some of the best wind energy potential in the world. Ireland has roughly 2% of the EU’s land mass but about 6% of the wind energy potential. This makes Ireland one of the richest countries in the world in terms of wind energy potential per capita.

The ambitious “Spirit of Ireland” project proposes to build a massive network of wind turbines and hydro energy reservoirs along the west coast of Ireland to not only meet the energy needs of Ireland, but to also export electricity to the UK and mainland Europe. The key principle behind this project lies with the hydro energy reservoirs. These are basically large water reservoirs built on the top of hills or cliffs. The wind turbines are used to power water pumps which will pump water up to these reservoirs. When the water is released from the reservoir it flows down hill through hydro electric turbines to generate electricity for the country. The basic theory is to convert wind energy to hydro energy to electricity.

The major disadvantage of wind energy alone is its unreliability. The wind might blow when you don’t need it and might not blow when you do. The major advantage of using hydro energy reservoirs along with wind turbines is that you will always have a constant supply regardless of the weather! Wind energy alone would never be reliable enough to meet the countries needs. Currently Ireland has only one hydro energy storage reservoir facilities at Turlough Hill Co. Wicklow. Spirit of Ireland envisage building many more of these along the west coast of Ireland.

With natural resources like this why would we even consider nuclear…

For more information on these ambitious plans see http://www.spiritofireland.org/

Tweet This Post

2 Comments

Tags:Building, climate, reduce

I recently read about the Environment 2.0 Exhibition at FutureEverything 2009. In particular two exhibits made a point of highlighting sources of Carbon Emissions in ways that encourage people to think of the impact they could be having on the environment.

The first was Aaron Koblin’s Flight Patterns

It is accepted that air travel is a major source of carbon emissions and will have to be tackled by governments who are aiming to cut emissions to meet increasingly ambitious targets and shows the reality of the current dependence on air travel by animating the flight paths of thousands of aircraft over US airspace in a 24 hour period.

The second was HeHe’s large-scale environmental installation Nuage Vert (meaning Green Cloud).

A laser image was projected on to the cloud of vapour as it spewed out from a power plant chimney (“the ultimate icon of industrial pollution”) over Helsinki with the aim of making the local population consider the emissions from the plant the relationship to their own power consumption. The image shape and size was adjusted according to power consumption and people in the local area were encouraged to reduce electricity usage while the image was projected so that “the green cloud could grow”.

These projects show us how the everyday activities of people are affecting the environment by presenting the effects of our actions in a visual way that anyone can appreciate. In much the same way, IES is constantly working to present solutions to these issues in a way that people can fully appreciate and use to improve building design so that emissions are lowered in future.

Tweet This Post

No Comments

Tags:Building, Environment, reduce

As a software developer the similarities between how we build and develop the software and how architects design buildings has always struck me. In this blog, I’d like to talk about how the architecture design concept of software engineering.

What is Software Architecture?

The software architecture is a structure which comprises of different elements, the external visible properties of these elements and relationships among them. It’s the organization process of defining a solution that meets all of the technical and operational requirements. It involves a series of decisions on a wide range of factors such as quality, performance, maintainability and overall success of the application.

Why is Architecture Important?

Like a complex building structure, software must have a solid foundation. Failing to consider key scenarios, design for common problems or to predict the long term consequence of a key decision can put the development work at risk. Poor architecture can make the software unstable, produce more bugs during coding phase and it is hard to support development for future business requirements.

The architecture design is an important phase of the whole development process; full consideration of user requirements, business goal and system ability, it draws a blueprint for the later work. At this stage, you should outline all the key scenarios in great details and identify all the possible pros and cons of each software attribute.

We should consider high level concerns instead of implementation details when designing architecture:

• How will the user be using the application?
• How the features of the application will benefit the user?
• How can the application be designed to be maintainable to meet the development schedule?

To understand the user requirements is the key to good architecture design, the software is just a service product which offers convenience and efficiency, all the design should be based on the consideration of those two factors.

The Goals of Architecture

An ideal architecture should be a perfect conversion between business requirements and technique requirements by understanding user cases and then defining a clear and neat way to implement those requirements by programming the software.

A good design is sufficiently flexible to be able to handle all of the user case studies and scenarios, both functional and quality requirements, efficient in implementation details.

The Principles of Architecture Design

Design the architecture with evolution in mind so that it will be able to adapt to requirements that are not fully known at the start of the design process, do not try to over engineer the architecture, and make assumptions that you can’t verify.

Instead you should keep your options open for future changes, identify the foundational parts of the architecture that represent the greatest risk if you get them wrong.

Key Architecture Principles

• Building software for change instead of building to last. There are always new requirements and feedbacks.
• Identifying critical decisions. Identify the areas where mistakes and further changes are most often made, getting these key engineering decisions right the first time so the design is more flexible.

Start with a base-line architecture to create the big picture, and then evolve the details and iteratively test and improve the architecture. Do not try to get every tiny detail right on the first attempt, get the big decision right first, and then focus on the details.

Tweet This Post

1 Comment

Tags:Architects, Building, Engineers

As an IES energy modeling Consultant I spend a lot of my time creating & populating large HVAC networks, but life has just got a hell of a lot easier for me. The new Multiplex feature in Version 6 of our software allows me to condense large complex ApacheHVAC networks into a much more manageable format with minimum effort. As the demand grows for more detailed HVAC system analysis tools we have been working hard on enhancing ApacheHVAC’s current capabilities in order to meet these demands. I really feel like it now addresses the practical issues that previously existed within the module. Combining Multiple inlets and outlets with the new Multiplex feature allows for multiple HVAC systems to be arranged and organized in such a way so that detailed air side schematics can be mapped accurately on to the ApacheHVAC work space. Creating and assigning layers to a Multiplex is a very simple process especially when using the “assign from room group” feature. Users can now quickly assign HVAC zones to any number of Multiplexed ApacheHVAC networks and populate any number of network controllers with the simple click of a button using a copy and paste command.

I have been putting the new Multiplex feature to the test over the last couple of months on some real life projects of considerable size and have been amazed with the results. Gone are the days of slogging over 400-1000 zone ApacheHVAC networks populating controllers one by one, this new feature increases productivity by an infinite magnitude. Forgive the rave, but I truly believe that through the invention of the Multiplex we will see a shift in the level of system analysis performed throughout the building industry, especially in the UK, this new feature really breaks down a lot of barriers and gives users of all levels and technical ability the power to perform detailed system analysis quickly and easily at concept or detailed design stage.

Kieran

Tweet This Post

No Comments

Tags:Building, HVAC, multiplex

We love coming back from the holidays to good news. According to Environmental Leader, and specifically by research released by Zpryme, the U.S. green building market is set to grow 146 percent by 2013.

According to the Environmental Leader article, “The commercial sector should get a boost from the news that major real estate firms have signed up for a pilot program that would help building owners, prospective tenants and buyers ascertain the energy efficiency of a building. The Building Energy Quotient program – Building EQ for short – is administered by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).”

We are looking forward to the results of the Building EQ program. Given our position in the industry, it is (and has been from the beginning) our hope that buildings are as energy efficient as possible. For new buildings, this starts from the earliest stages of design. For retrofits, there are many changes architects can implement during the remodel to ensure a building not only reduces its energy usage, but also reduces it carbon emissions.

On another note, and for a little fun to start your new year off right, our partners at Autodesk have created RetroFits, a game to help raise awareness about the benefits of better, greener buildings. Stop by and check it out! Buildings continue to be the #1 source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. But we can make them more energy efficient, little by little.

Tweet This Post

No Comments

Tags:Architects, ASHRAE, Autodesk, Building, Engineers, reduce, USA

I am going to step away from building this time and have a look at the pollution and environmental damage from aviation sector.

I have taken two pictures in Beijing while making a trip there, we can see that the air quality is rather poor during the daytime, the visibility in the city is low and it is not due to the moisture on that day, it is air pollution! I know there are a lot of factors that contribute to the pollution, factories, cars, planes etc. But in this article, we will just focus on aviation.

According to IATA’s Director General, Giovanni Bisignani, by 2010, Asia will be the largest single market for aviation. IATA is focused on reducing fuel burn hence reducing carbon emission, with every litre of fuel saved, reduces about 3kg of CO2 emission.

For speech of the IATA’s Director General, please visit:
http://www.iata.org/pressroom/speeches/2008-02-25-01.htm

The aircraft companies are working hard nowadays to reduce the fuel consumption of their airplanes. We now see better design and better engines, all these are to help create a cleaner environment around. But there are only certain limits that the aircraft companies can do, to solve the problems, everyone (including government body, airlines companies and passengers) should play a role as well in reducing the green house gases emission. With government body, airport management groups and airline companies working on shortening routes, improving air traffic management and spreading best practice in fuel conservation, what can we as passenger do to help?

I recently read one short article from a forum in Asia, one Asian airline has set up a trial policy on certain flight route that they will ask passengers to go to the toilet before boarding the plane in order to lose some weight. By doing this, they estimated that can save around 4.2 tonnes of CO2 emission per month. I personally welcome this approach as not only you help reduce the overall weight of the plane while it’s travelling, but it also gives you bigger and cleaner spaces in modern airport’s toilet. And not to mention the washrooms queuing time that I always see inside the plane!!

Here are some extra small tips that I picked up from an airline magazine about travelling:
1. Bring clothes that can mix and match easily, so you don’t need to bring too many clothes.
2. Only bring necessary accessories.
3. Roll clothes up for tidy packing, so you can use a smaller suitcase.
4. Bring lightweight equipments for business trip.

These are just some examples how we can help to reduce carbon footprint.

Nowadays I have also seen airlines applying strict restrictions and penalties on the weight of check in and hand carry luggage, I think a lot of these penalties are purely to cover the extra fuel that the airlines might need for heavier planes and not from the environmental point of view, but it certainly will help our future generation if we start using less fuel. So let’s start travel as light as possible or even better travel less where possible!

Tweet This Post

1 Comment

Tags:Building, Engineers, Environment, reduce, Welcome