Sustainable Design Committee Members,
We are in the process right now of developing a work plan for
next year and would like to solicit any ideas that you have for projects. For
next year we would like to start including a few projects in our work. Below
you can find a list of ideas that we came up with at our last meeting.
Committee projects work best if the people working on them want to work on them,
so we would love to hear your ideas and add them to the list. We will be
compiling the ideas and going through them at our January meeting and asking for
volunteers and leaders to tackle some of this work.
1. Concrete Taskforce
follow through: Complete and disseminate research on typical concrete mixes
using supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) and other cement-reducing
techniques. Expect to produce one or more articles for Equilibrium.
2. Wood/Timber Research:
There are several potential topics to be investigated/researched with regards to
wood and timber construction. Possible topics include, but are not limited
to:
a.
Overall sustainability of wood products (examine industry claims
of carbon neutral or carbon negative).
b.
How to build with wood for a longer design life.
c.
The efforts needed and benefits of using reclaimed wood
products.
d.
Using CLTs or heavy timber framing as alternatives to steel/concrete
structures (update for recent fire rating tests).
3. Disaster Resilience:
Prepare 2-3 articles on disaster resilience for SEAW newsletter. Potentially
follow up with presentation. Articles to use the 3 pillars of sustainability to
justify (Economics, Environment, Social). Preliminary basis for articles as
follows:
a.
Planning for survival: Coordinate with ACT organizations. Focus
is on what you and your family should have available in your home, office,
school etc. and the appropriate behaviors and actions to follow after a
disaster. Primarily affects social pillar.
b.
Getting back to normal: Focus is on what roles structural
engineers can take to help bring society back to normal and how to plan for the
activities that will be required. Includes information on business planning to
keep your business operating (economics) and on rapid evaluation procedures for
buildings (social).
c.
Minimizing the impact: Investigates how SE’s can impact the
sustainability of the built environment right now, before a disaster arrives.
Showcase tools for evaluating resilience/estimating loss (ATC work and PACT
software, Hazuz, etc). Affects economic pillar immediately with delayed impact
to social and environmental pillars.
4. Foreign Building
Projects: Build a case study of innovative, green structural solutions
developed for construction of volunteer projects abroad with the goals of
encouraging creativity, reducing environmental impacts in our own practice, and
encouraging outreach to societies in need.
5. European design
practices and standards: Research green building practices in Europe. Where
certain areas of practice are more developed than in the US. Compare European
practices and standards to the US’s and summarize changes to US practice that
would be reasonable given any differences.
