September news roundup

Time for a news roundup -- recent links from around the web. Have something you want shared with SEAW? Send it our way.

Wood

Lessons learned on recent mass timber buildings around the world

http://www.rethinkwood.com/tall-wood-survey

Hans-Erik wrote an article on tall wood buildings in Arcade magazine (note: article is embargoed for non-subscribers until November 11)

http://arcadenw.org/issues/empathy-fire-and-spades

FPInnovations is selling a handbook on Tall Wood buildings for Canada

https://fpinnovations.ca/ResearchProgram/advanced-building-systems/Pages/promo-tall-wood-buildings.aspx#.VBmdPBYZ7CU

The website for the ambitious USA Tall Wood Building competition is now active. The goal is to realize at least an 8 or 10 story commercially viable timber high rise in the USA. http://tallwoodbuildingcompetition.org/

Reuse and Preservation

Architectural Record discusses buildings that are not flexible or functional enough to last long.

http://archrecord.construction.com/features/critique/2014/1409-Obdurate-By-Design.asp                                     

Preservation Green Lab (a project of The National Trust for Historic Preservation) finds that a mix of older and smaller buildings hold more economic and social vitality than new construction.

http://www.preservationnation.org/information-center/sustainable-communities/green-lab/oldersmallerbetter/

Preservation Green Lab begins a research series on building demolition and reuse with an article that uses Los Angeles as a case study for issues surrounding building reuse.

http://www.preservationnation.org/information-center/sustainable-communities/green-lab/partnership-building-reuse/

Energy

AIA is giving a series of classes on net zero building design

http://www.aiaseattle.org/GettingToZero

Building codes could harmonize seamlessly with LEED certification as USGBC, ASHRAE, and ICC join forces
http://www.usgbc.org/articles/standard-1891-igcc-leed-phillips-head-hammer

http://www2.buildinggreen.com/article/one-standard-rule-them-all-leed-igcc-1891-be-parts-single-system

Resilience

A resilient city conference was held in San Francisco this September and discussed the Rebuild by Design competition sponsored by the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force

http://resilientcity.uli.org/           http://www.rebuildbydesign.org/

Oakland hires its first “Chief Resilience Officer”

http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/oakland-hires-its-first-chief-resilience-officer

The Cost of Retrofitting Multifamily for Resilience (to floods)

http://urbanland.uli.org/sustainability/resilience-efforts-hurt-affordability-multifamily/

Kiewit General Manson issues their design-build team’s first annual report on the strategies they used to incorporate sustainability into the SR 520 design.

SR 520 Floating Bridge and Landings Project Annual Sustainability Data Report

 

ASCE International Conference on Sustainable Infrastructure 2014

For those of you who do engineering for infrastructure, the International Conference on Sustainable Infrastructure is in Long Beach, California, November 6-8, 2014. It is hosted by ASCE. www.asce.org/icsi2014
This is the first international conference of its kind. The call for papers has closed.

Buzzwords from the program include: climate change, extreme events, risk, resiliency, adaptation, envision rating system. More from the program

This conference is not about how to be sustainable. If it were, we would tell you not to
waste your time. Instead, and more appropriately, this conference is about how to deal
with the consequences of non-sustainability, that is, how to plan, design and construct
infrastructure for a new and increasingly harsh operating environment.
Today, engineers, academicians and other practitioners are facing difficult and
unprecedented challenges in addressing a new reality for infrastructure design.
Decade after decade of non-sustainable economic development is changing the
environmental conditions under which infrastructure is supposed to operate. It is also
changing the cost and availability of critical resources such as fresh water and energy.
How we as engineers and scientists deal effectively with these changes is the most
important challenge of the 21st century.
This international conference is the first of its kind. We have brought together people
from across the world; people who are building the knowledge base and developing
the requisite policies and practices to handle the challenge of a changing operating
environment. We designed the conference for practitioners, enabling them to engage
with others, exchange ideas, and see the full spectrum of activities in infrastructure
design for this new reality.

You can also meet members of the Sustainability Committee of the Coasts, Oceans, Ports and Rivers Institute (COPRI) of ASCE. Contact Angie Lander at ASCE for more information on the committee.

If you are a member of the SEAW Sustainability Committee and are interested in attending and sharing what you've learned, we want to hear from you.  We can help defer the cost of attending.

City Council to Review Proposed Changes to the Living Building and Seattle Deep Green Pilot Program

Major changes have been proposed to Seattle's Living Building and Deep Green program -- briefing and public meeting scheduled for July 1.

Mayor Ed Murray delivered proposed changes for the Living Building and Seattle Deep Green Pilot Program to the City Council for consideration. At this time, the proposed changes eliminate the Deep Green option to focus the pilot program on Living Buildings. Meanwhile, DPD will continue to develop recommendations for updated new Seattle Deep Green option.

See more at: http://buildingconnections.seattle.gov/2014/05/30/city-council-to-review-proposed-changes-to-the-living-building-and-seattle-deep-green-pilot-program/#sthash.UNYjCpYK.dpuf

Last-minute announcement for Cascadia GBC event on LCA

Tonight, April 23, at 6pm, the Cascadia GBC Seattle LEED Users Group (SLUG) is hosting a discussion on the MR credits in LEED v4, with a focus on the life cycle assessment (LCA) requirements.

More information at:
http://living-future.org/events/leed-v4-world-renowned-expert-life-cycle-assessment-expert

USGBC Partners with UL to Improve MR Transparency

US Green Building Council, creator of LEED rating system, issued a press release to talk about teaming up with another big player:

USGBC and UL Environment Announce Exclusive Strategic Partnership on Building Materials & Products Transparency

The first initiative of the partnership is the creation of a joint Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). EPDs are a standardized way of quantifying the environmental impact of a product or system. The joint USGBC-UL EPDs are a solution to increase transparency in building materials and products that are being used in our buildings, homes, schools, hospitals and other structures.

Here's an article that summarizes some of the reasoning. Apparently this came to the ire of some other companies involved in creating Life Cycle Assessments and EPDs, maybe because they see UL as a competitor, or because they have already spent time and resources working to existing standards.

http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm/2013/12/2/UL-USGBC-Team-Up-to-Standardize-LCA-Rules/

From the article:

there are multiple LCA software tools, which all use the chosen data differently. This can lead to sometimes-disparate results: in a recent analysis of biomass emissions, for example, UL found a 30% difference in outputs between two different software programs. “Those inconsistencies have to be known, and they have to be fixed,” he said.

 

Recent sustainability news

Here are a few articles and announcements that have been shared at recent meetings.

MIT wants A/E teams to submit the embodied carbon of their projects to a public database: http://www.gostructural.com/article/9630/participating-in-an-embodied-carbon-database

Even though the showing has past, the movie sounds interesting if you can find it. 
https://www.historicseattle.org/events/eventdetail.aspx?id=594

The Greenest Building explores the myth that a “green building” is a new building and demonstrates how renovation and adaptive reuse of existing structures fully achieves the sustainability movement’s “triple bottom line” - economic, social, and ecological balance.

A summary of the Timber Tower Research Project by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill: http://www.structuremag.org/article.aspx?articleID=1825

A series of articles on current green practice in the Pacific Northwest:
http://www.djc.com/special/green2014/

Sustainable Structures Symposium. A conference at Portland State University April 17-18, 2014

http://web.pdx.edu/~cgriffin/symposium/

Two projects by KPFF feature cross-laminated timber roofs:

http://www.djc.com/news/co/12063234.html

Right-sizing under-slab insulation.  Cheaper, less-stiff insulation can carry the load.
http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/b0dfdc2f#/b0dfdc2f/14

A summary of LEED v4 items that are relevant to structural engineers:
http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/b0dfdc2f#/b0dfdc2f/28

Local LMN sustainability architect, Kjell Anderson, just published a book: "Design Energy Simulation for Architects."  This interview discusses case study experiences:
http://aiawa.org/2013/05/28/interview-design-energy-simulation-for-architects-w-kjell-anderson-aia/ 

Sustainability Presentation by WoodWorks

WoodWorks, the education cooperative of the Wood Products Council, is holding a lunch and learn about the sustainability of wood construction.  From their announcement:

Building for the Future: How Wood Contributes to Sustainable Construction

This course will examine how the use of wood as a structural material in buildings contributes to their environmental performance.  Attendees will learn how to quantify the sustainability of their building designs through life cycle assessment (LCA) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs).  Discussion will include the impact of wood on a building's carbon footprint, and the effects of timber harvesting practices on North American forests over the past 100 years.  Wood-based framing systems and details will be presented to demonstrate material and energy-efficient options available, including alternate systems and techniques such as cross laminated timber (CLT) and advanced framing.

 The seminar is from 11am to 2pm on October 24 at the Morton Steakhouse in Seattle.  It costs $20 which includes lunch.  Register here.

Update: The slides from the presentation are available here among other Woodworks presentations.

Clash of the green giants

Our newest committee member, Sean Augustino, wanted to share a Portland Tribune article about the battle between LEED and Green Globes:

Clash of the green giants

Only a handful of local buildings have used Green Building Initiative’s rival Green Globes rating system, Rekow concedes, because “this has been a very LEED-centric city.” But the number of Green Globes-certified building projects around the country doubled in the past two years, she says, and now totals 850.

LEED, by contrast, has been used in more than 55,000 projects around the world.

But Green Globes could take a leap forward after a recent review by the U.S. General Services Administration elevated it to near-equal status with LEED, which had been the exclusive green-rating system used for federal building projects.

http://portlandtribune.com/pt/9-news/198549-clash-of-the-green-giants
Thanks, Sean!

Generic EPDs for wood

The American Wood Council, in coordination with the Canadian Wood Council, has produced a series of generic EPDs for a variety of commonly-used wood products. These EPDs can be used to aid in a whole-building LCA or to count towards the EPD-related credit in the upcoming LEED v4.

Find more at: http://www.awc.org/greenbuilding/epd.html​