This is my second post in what I hope will continue to be a series reacting to each chapter of the 2006 Building Design + Construction White Paper: Green Buildings and the Bottom Line. Chapter 4 discusses retail stores and their comparatively slow adaptation of sustainable design principles. Why care? Retail stores are the largest […]
BD+C Webcast Compares Energy Star, LEED, and Green Globes Rating Systems
Eric Truelove, P.E., LEED-AP, Director of Sustainable Services at The Renschler Company in Madison, Wisconsin, kicked off last Thursday’s Building Design + Construction, New Developments in Green Building, webcast with an excellent overview, and comparison, of the Energy Star, LEED, and Green Globes rating systems. Subsequent presenters during the hour and a half webcast also […]
Thursday’s BD+C Webcast
Just a quick post to direct you to tomorrow’s (Thursday’s) free Building Design + Construction New Developments in Green Building Webcast. BD+C EiC Robert Cassidy will moderate a panel discussing the pros and cons of LEED and Green Globes, as well as daylighting and site planning issues, starting at 2PM EST. I’ve never participated in […]
BD+C White Paper: Chapter 3, Financing Green Office Buildings
My somewhat ambitious goal for the remainder of 2006, at least with respect to this blog, is to provide a review, with commentary, for each chapter of the 2006 Building Design + Construction green building White Paper (which came out last month and is entitled Green Buildings and the Bottom Line). In my last post […]
Off Site Search Optimization
Off site search engine optimization techniques involve efforts made on websites outside of your own to push your own ranking higher. These can include: a. Fake Out Pages This can take a variety of forms from running links that are not even from your brand in ways that don’t match the homepage layout to using […]
BD+C Green Building White Paper Acknowledges Potential Green Liability Issues
I’m planning a more detailed post about Building Design + Construction‘s recently released 2006 White Paper on Sustainability (this year’s is titled Green Building and the Bottom Line), but I wanted to briefly point out that item number ten (of ten!) in the editors’ Executive Summary is a direct acknowledgement of the legal issues that […]
More on Trees in LA: The Million Trees Initiative
After chatting with me about yesterday’s post, my good friend ND out in Los Angeles pointed me to a terrific project that’s taking place across the City of Angels right now. The Million Trees LA Initiative is a collaborative program spearheaded by the city, community groups, local businesses, and residents with the goal of planting […]
L.A. Prepares to Bid Palm Tree Adieu
An article in today’s New York Times discusses the Los Angeles City Council’s decision to plant close to a million trees indigenous to Southern California (sycamores, crape myrtles, etc.) instead of replacing or even maintaining many of the city’s palm trees as they die off over the next several years. As the article details, palm […]
GSA to Require BIM for Select Projects
Following up on my last post about BIM, the General Services Administration has announced that it will require new buildings designed through its Public Buildings Service to employ BIM during the design phase. “We are making this fiscal ’07 requirement as a minimum requirement,” said Calvin Kam, GSA’s BIM project manager. “We are encouraging [people], […]
Thoughts on the Autodesk/USGBC Partnership
The news coming out of Greenbuild includes the announcement of a partnership between Autodesk and USGBC. This is excellent news for smaller projects interested in applying for LEED certification, but at the same time will present liability issues for design teams, particularly with respect to Building Information Modeling (“BIM”). Autodesk and the Green Building Council […]