Parenting Your Project

Working toward a more sustainable future, including predominantly changes in the design, construction and operations arena, requires many of the same skills and approaches as being a good parent. We teach our kids to learn, to grow, to accept responsibility, to stand on their own two feet and then to work well with their community and their own selected and loved family of their adulthood. We must foster building projects in a similar way.

Read these two sets of sentences aloud.

• Tomorrow we are visiting Aunt Jo and you must shape up and be on your best behavior. I don’t want you to disappoint or embarrass me.
• Tomorrow we are visiting Aunt Jo and I know she will be so impressed with you. You are intelligent and respectful, and I am proud to have you with me.

Slight exaggerations, perhaps, but these two approaches represent pivotal differences in parenting, and in design. In the first, we are setting limits. You need to perform to this minimum level of acceptance, and I know it will be hard, but try or you will embarrass me and I will likely punish you. This is a lot like a code standard in that we have set a level of performance through prescriptive or detailed performance objectives, and there are repercussions if those levels are not met. The code does little (though the new NY State Energy Code is better, this time around) to illuminate the aspirational goals that should inform the process.

The code says you can’t do this and you must do this and you must at least meet xxx performance if you are to obey the law. Then there are building inspectors and code officials whose job is not to judge the effectiveness of a building, but to ascertain if you have at least met the code. One of the biggest realms of struggle in the building market is when new technologies are available, but don’t quite align with the descriptions and limits set in code. If the code officials don’t understand greywater reclamation, there is little to no capacity to include it in a project. If there is a methodology for improving enclosure performance but it includes a phase-change material that has not been used widely, there will be a significant amount of review and process for getting acceptance under code, even if the performance is exemplary. Off-grid is still not allowed in some communities, because of the perceived lack of control and minimum performance criteria in that lack of connection. So, even as code sets minimum limits of performance, it inadvertently sets minimum expectations, and works toward meeting them. “I know it will be hard for you, but you must be on your best behavior. Don’t disappoint me.”

I’m not advocating elimination of code, certainly, because the origins of code are in health and safety, where we need standards. But is there a way to establish standards while being clear about the potential that each new building project or each renovation presents to us?

What would occur in the building industry if projects could be based almost exclusively on broadly aspirational goals, and instilled with the understanding and expectation that the project team has the right and the responsibility of innovation, can take pride in their experiences, and that there is no limit to the achievement? What if we could say the goals for the project include exceptional energy efficiency, or better yet, significant reduction of GHG emissions overall, and this is our first priority within the established budget. They will work for tight, tight, tight, with properly controlled ventilation, and then all will be well. The team must, of course, understand the full complexity of energy efficiency so they realize they will have to reduce toxins in materials, they will have to make the building usable for the occupants and engage the users in running the building, they will have to ensure the products are durable and that there is a sense of beauty so that the owner, users and facility managers love and maintain the building over time.  For continued optimal energy use there must be a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) and the facility manager should build operational management on a continual improvement strategy.

What if we stopped setting goals based on a code minimum? I have been in so many discussions where we are trying to determine which ASHRAE standard and what year is applicable in the energy model (for LEED proof or for NYSERDA proof or for what?) when we could have been spending that time identifying and designing good systems, including building envelope systems, to support the building users. We often spend too much time defining the lowest acceptable limits, when we should be figuring out everything we CAN do.  “I am proud of you, and I know you will impress them with your knowledge and your respect.”

That tone leaves a huge world of excellence within our grasp. How do YOU talk to (about) your building projects?

Jodi

 

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