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Instructor information: Richard Paradis, P.E., BSCP, Bd. Cert. Noise Control Engineer

Course Length: 1 Hour

This webinar was co-sponsored by ASCE's Architectural Engineering Institute and ASCE Continuing Education

Purpose and Background

Buildings are failing to perform up to owners’ and occupants’ expectations. Further, the long-term performance of buildings falls short of meeting designers’ goals and calculations.

This webinar will examine the issues and initiatives that lead us to the need for high performance buildings; the obstacles to be overcome to achieve high performance buildings; tools and resources that help us get to high performance; and examples of successes.

Topics to be covered include: laws, initiatives and executive orders; studies citing the problems with our buildings; the integrated project development process; tools and resources, including the Whole Building Design Guide website (WBDG); the importance of operations and maintenance personnel participating in the process; the value of monitoring building systems performance; and commissioning of new buildings and retrocommissioning of existing buildings.

New initiatives and government requirements mean our buildings must be more energy efficient, environmentally sustainable and safer and more secure than ever. These initiatives apply not just to new buildings, but to the renovation of existing buildings. To achieve these goals, it will take new thinking; new materials, products and systems; an understanding of the interrelationship of all building systems; and the need for all participants in project development to be involved in the process early on.

Learning Objectives

Participants in the seminar will:
- Understand the issues and initiatives leading us to high performance buildings
- Learn what studies are saying about occupant satisfaction
- Discover tools and resources that help achieve high performance, especially the WBDG website
- Learn the importance of the project development team working together
- Know how to retrofit buildings for high performance
- See examples of high performance buildings

Seminar Benefits

- Find out about the latest high performance building initiatives
- Examine the reasons why we are not getting high performance buildings
- Learn how applying the integrated project development process gets you to high performance
- Explore resources, including the WBDG
- Understand the relationship between sustainability and security
- See the importance of tying in the Operator/Maintenance (O&M) staff early in the project development process
- Understand the importance of monitoring building systems performance after occupancy 

Intended Audience

Engineers, architects, project managers, operations and maintenance personnel, building owners, design-build contractors, and others interested in designing, owning and occupying high performance buildings will benefit from this webinar. The webinar is broad in scope and serves as an introduction to high performance buildings and the integrated project development process.

Summary Outline

- Defining high-performance buildings
- Factors influencing current & future building projects
- High performance building considerations
- Problem areas in current buildings, existing and new
- Building metrics
- Tools for better buildings
- The integrated design ‘whole building’ approach
- WBDG
- Existing building considerations
- Additional WBDG resources
- High performance programs and initiatives