Sustainable Buildings Industry Council

Mission: To unite and inspire the building industry toward higher performance, through education, outreach, advocacy and the mutual exchange of ideas.

Vision: To improve the long-term performance and value of buildings by advancing a whole building approach to design, construction and operation.

SBIC’s commitment to better buildings began in the late ’70s with a focus on energy efficiency and renewable energy use. By the 1990s, SBIC was working with GSA, DoD, EPA and DOE to develop the Sustainability Principles for Executive Order 13123: Optimize Site Potential, Minimize Energy Use and Use Renewable Energy Strategies, Conserve and Protect Water, Use Environmentally Preferable Products, Enhance Indoor Environmental Quality, and Optimize Operations and Maintenance Practices.

This work coincided with SBIC widening its scope to cover sustainability more broadly, not just energy. SBIC conceptualized the Whole Building Design Guide (www.wbdg.org), along with our partners at NAVFAC, GSA, DoD and other federal agencies.

In 2006, SBIC received the National Institute of Building Sciences Honor Award for initiating and developing the WBDG, for its support of sustainable building technologies, and for advancing whole building performance through the integration and coordination of complex facility performance objectives.

More recently, SBIC has gone Beyond Green^TM, on the view that creating buildings that are simply green is not enough. We bring the same energy to eight design objectives so that we create high-performance buildings that are accessible, aesthetic, cost-effective, functional, healthy, historic, safe/secure, and sustainable.

SBIC membership is open to organizations, trade associations, companies and individuals. Many of the original founding members have supported the work of the Council for over 25 years. Nonprofits, architects, engineers, home builders, utilities, consultants, product and material manufacturers, suppliers, universities, professors, students, other building-related professionals and interested individuals all take part in the Council’s mission.

In two and a half decades, SBIC has built and kept up successful partnerships with government agencies, companies, and a wide variety of organizations whose work relates to the built environment. Our proactive approach to partnering allows us to recognize a diverse array of experts and organizations and brings them together to learn from and complement each other’s talents and experience. When you partner with SBIC, whether the catalyzing event is a workshop, seminar, discussion forum, or a national policy initiative, the results are effective.

SBIC members and partners share the goal of delivering buildings that provide long-term value and performance, reduce operating costs, keep occupants safe, comfortable and healthy, and protect the natural environment.

What is sustainability? What is Beyond Green? What is a high-performance building?

SBIC defines sustainability as a way of thinking and acting responsibly. A sustainable building is one in which the site, design, construction, occupancy, maintenance, and deconstruction of the building are accounted for in ways that promote energy, water, and material efficiencies, while providing healthy, productive, and comfortable indoor environments and long-term benefits to owners, occupants, and society as a whole. We believe that local actions relating to building design and construction have a long-term, global impact. SBIC follows these principles of sustainable design and development:

1. Promoting environmental regeneration through construction
2. Minimizing the destruction of the global biosphere due to buildings and construction
3. Minimizing the consumption of nonrenewable energy, land, and other limited resources
4. Minimizing the waste, and encouraging the recycling, of materials, water, and other limited resources
5. Creating livable, durable, healthy, and productive environments
6. Providing for easier restoration of the natural environment

Besides teaching sustainable design and construction strategies, SBIC is eager to share our view that sustainability, while critical, cannot stand alone. We are all aware, for example, of the effects of natural disasters and the importance of disaster resistance after the Katrina and Rita hurricanes, and of the growing need for accessibility and security in our buildings. A more inclusive, integrated perspective, which we call going Beyond Green^TM, is required. Understanding and applying a whole building approach from design to turnover makes sense and results in high-performance buildings.

High-performance buildings address human, environmental, economic, and total societal impact. As defined by SBIC, high-performance buildings are:

• Sustainable
• Safe / Secure
• Functional
• Aesthetic
• Historic
• Productive
• Accessible
• Cost-Effective

For more than 25 years, SBIC has worked with our members, national laboratories, federal agencies, and other partners in the building industry on the following initiatives:

• Federal sector training programs
• Continuing education and professional development
• Educational briefings and advocacy
• Curriculum development and delivery
• Beyond Green^TM High-Performance Building Awards
• Technical guidance
• Web-based training and outreach
• Design tools and software

In 2001, the Sustainable Buildings Industry Council started its own Awards Program to recognize the contributions its members make to sustainability across the United States. The Best Sustainable Practice Award and Exemplary Sustainable Building Award went to Council members and industry professionals who built the whole building approach into their practices and designs.

The Awards Program is a central part of SBIC’s commitment to the design, construction and maintenance of high-performance buildings through education, outreach, and advocacy.

These awards recognize initiatives that shape and inform the high-performance building market, and the real-world application of high-performance construction practices. The program is open to all and offers two entry categories, High-Performance Initiatives and High-PerformanceBuildings. Federal, state and private sector entries are welcome.

Commercial, institutional and residential buildings are all eligible. Suitable applicants include trade associations, researchers, architects, engineers, consultants, universities and educators, builders, public and private building owners, product manufacturers and suppliers, marketing and media experts, and utilities.

SBIC’s residential program

Every year millions of homes are built in the United States, buildings that then consume about 20 percent of America’s energy every year thereafter. By applying no-cost and low-cost design principles, we can lower the energy consumption of future housing stock by 30 to 50 percent. SBIC’s award-winning residential program teaches home builders and home buyers the fundamentals of green home design:

• Community and site planning
• Renewable energy and energy efficiency strategies
• The building envelope
• Efficient water use (both indoor and outdoor)
• Indoor environmental quality
• Green materials
• Homeowner operations and maintenance

Our program covers home design, construction, performance, and maintenance. Through tested lessons and easy-to-read guidelines, we give those new to green home building the tools to start. Our program lets builders, remodelers, contractors, and homeowners get acquainted with particular topic areas, begin working new design strategies into their practices, reach more in-depth discussions on technical subjects, and eventually go beyond green^TM

The center piece of our program is the fifth edition of our builder-friendly Green Building Guidelines primer and the three hour companion seminar. The Council also offers the popular ENERGY-10(R) software for modeling homes and small commercial buildings to optimize energy, materials, and siting decisions.

SBIC’s high-performance school buildings program

The impetus for this program was a 1996 prediction that about 6,000 K-12 schools would be needed by 2007 in the US. We took the opportunity and launched an education, outreach, and advocacy campaign aimed at shaping the early design decisions made by school facility planners, so they would create not just sustainable or green schools, but truly high-performance facilities. Since the late 1990s, much has changed. Millions of square feet of schools have been built every year.

Most recently, according to the American School & University’s 33^rd Annual Official Education Construction Report, school districts nationwide increased spending on construction from $23B to $25.3B in 2006.

School districts seeking high-performance buildings face many obstacles: costs have skyrocketed, planning and budgeting has become more complex, maintenance schedules have been deferred, and while the goal of high-performing school buildings is now widely accepted, achieving one is not as common.

Our schools program addresses three key questions:

1. What is a high-performance school building?
2. Why is it valuable?
3. And, How can they be achieved in the community?

We have in-depth technical training for the architects and engineers designing these schools, but SBIC’s program is unusual because it speaks directly to the procurement specialists, school board members, superintendents and district officials, and community advocates who seek high-performance schools, and because it goes Beyond Green^TM homing in on issues like accessibility, safety and security, durability, and classroom acoustics, perhaps one of the hardest issues facing educators today.

The centerpiece of the program is the third edition of our High-Performance School Buildings Resource & Strategy Guide and the two-day Beyond Green^TM companion workshop. The Council has also created on-line training for NYSERDA and an Information & Training Center for those seeking to promote these facilities.

SBIC’s small commercial buildings

SBIC’s Small Commercial Buildings program helps architects, engineers, builders, and their clients create energy-efficient and environmentally sensitive small and medium-sized commercial, institutional, and residential buildings.

Our publications, resources, and training programs encourage building designers to apply energy-efficient strategies early in the design process by combining passive solar design techniques, such as daylighting and shading, and conventional energy-saving measures, such as insulation and high-efficiency lights.

The goal of the program is to teach thousands of architects, engineers, building designers, academics, and students in the United States to apply these approaches as part of the normal design process. With this program, SBIC for the first time stepped beyond a focus on passive solar design techniques for homes and into addressing the challenges of designing climate-responsive, small commercial (internal load dominated) buildings.

The key tool for this program is the ENERGY-10(R) software, a design tool that analyzes, and illustrates, the energy and cost savings that can be achieved through more than a dozen sustainable design strategies. The software helps architects and building professionals generate data on a building’s energy-efficiency strategies quickly and easily, with minimal upfront information.

Hourly energy simulations help the designer quantify, assess, and clearly depict the benefits of daylighting, passive solar heating, natural ventilation, well-insulated envelopes, better windows, lighting systems, mechanical equipment, solar hot water heating, photovoltaics, and more.

We developed a special classroom workshop that gives designers the chance to take part in discussions about integrated design practices and to receive hands-on ENERGY-10(R) software instruction. It covers 16 energy-efficiency strategies that software users need to understand to use it well.

• Daylighting
• Glazing
• Shading
• Energy-efficient lighting
• Lighting controls
• Insulation
• Air leakage control
• Thermal mass
• Passive solar heating
• Natural ventilation
• Economizer cycle
• Exhaust air heat recovery
• High-efficiency HVAC
• HVAC
• Evaporative cooling controls
• Solar water heating

SBIC’s federal and large commercial buildings program

SBIC’s Federal Buildings program addresses the pressing need to meet the sustainability objectives.

Architects, engineers, building owners and managers in both the public and private sectors have come to see that an integrated design approach is critical to achieving truly high-performance buildings. This approach is premised on a ‘whole building’ understanding and requires an analysis of how systems depend on each other.

For example, site access, building orientation, and storm water runoff are codependent; so too are HVAC, fire protection, security and acoustics. A building system can no longer be designed as if it had no effect on other systems and other design decisions.

Along with an introduction to high-performance buildings using the whole building approach, developing the owner’s project requirements, and total building commissioning, our program covers:

• site planning and design: energy, sustainability, accessibility and security,
• building form and envelope: energy, sustainability, accessibility and security,
• Renewable energy: PV, solar thermal, passive solar design strategies, getting to ‘zero energy’ and seeking carbon neutral,
• Lighting: daylighting, efficient electric lighting and controls, lighting for security,
• HVAC: low energy strategies, sustainability, control strategies, security issues,
• Water: conservation, energy use, sustainability and security,Environmentally preferable materials,
• Indoor environmental quality: acoustics, glare, air quality,
• Discussion of green building rating systems, and
• Tools and resources: ENERGY-10 energy-efficient design software and the Internet-based Whole Building Design Guide.

For design professionals who want in-depth expert design consultation beyond what our guidelines offer, SBIC offers Peer Reviews and Design Charrettes as well as Customized Workshops.

Peer reviews & design charrettes

An expert team of SBIC member designers, engineers, and energy analysts will review proposed building designs and recommend resource conservation and energy-efficiency strategies suited to your project and budget. By integrating daylighting, passive solar strategies, natural ventilation, and renewable energy options, you can significantly reduce your operating costs over time, while creating a more healthful and productive environment.

We can help you weigh the merits of building integrated photovoltaics, rain water collection, pervious surfaces, bio-retention, and other ‘whole building’ strategies, and perform cost analysis to determine which options are right for your particular project and budget. We’ll also look at the benefits of specifying low or no-VOC green building materials and finishes, which can improve indoor environmental quality.

Many building owners and managers have found that these improvements pay for themselves many times over during the structure’s life, and that simple payback, the time required for material, system, and design upgrades to be recouped by lower energy costs and other operational savings, occurs within the first few years of operation.

We offer technical expertise in each of the following areas:

• Energy performance analysis using leading design tools such as DOE 2.1E, Designing Low-Energy Buildings with ENERGY-10(R) software, RADIANCE, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
• Use of rating tools such as the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating system
• Production of case studies, marketing and promotional materials, press releases, videos, web site content, reporting and documentation
• Green building materials and indoor air quality
• Design charrettes, follow-up evaluations, and guidance on finding potential funding sources for your particular project

Customized workshops

SBIC can tailor a workshop to meet the specific needs of any organization. Because project management often varies from one organization to another, the Council makes a point of addressing these differences in our customized workshops.

SBIC’s professional training & continuing education center

Any of the following workshops can be customized to meet the needs of your project or organization. Contact SBIC to learn more about SBIC’s custom services.

Green building guidelines seminars and workshops

Today’s home buyers are looking for sustainable homes and home builders who can construct them. Are you one of them? SBIC hosts half-day seminars and full-day workshops that introduce builders to sustainable, or green, home design. Contractors, remodelers, residential architects, and interested home buyers can also gain a lot. learn more

Beyond Green high-performance schools workshop

The Council works with its members, partners and industry experts to offer workshops to communities interested in building high-performance school buildings.

Instructors with expertise in sustainable school building design and K-12 school procurement present studies and data, examples, testimonials, and design strategies to an audience of design professionals and school district administrators.

Designing low-energy buildings with the ENERGY-10(R) software

This workshop teaches you the ins and outs of energy analysis using SBIC’s ENERGY-10(R) software. It also covers the 16 Energy Efficient Strategies (EES) that users must understand to work effectively with the software.

Architects, engineers, utilities, code officials, and government agencies will find the training especially useful.

Beyond GreenTM: a high-performance approach to building design, construction and operations

Federal government engineers and architects, private sector professionals doing federal government projects, and building owners and managers will find useful information in this workshop. This workshop will help you meet the sustainability requirements defined in EX 13423, EPAct 2005, and the EISA Act of 2007.

Employing the Whole Building Design Guide to achieve high-performance buildings

The seminar includes an overview of the WBDG website, newly updated and even more user-friendly, the Executive Order 13423 Technical Guidance, Federal Facilities Case Studies, Continuing Education Learning modules, and Resources and Tools for Architects, Engineers and Facility Managers.

SBIC high-performance school buildings on-line training center

The site has on-line resources for those who already know the benefits of high-performance school buildings and wish to promote them in their communities.