| RESILIENT BUILDING CODES |
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At the time of this article’s writing, there have been eight weather and climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each across the United States this year. These events included two floods and six severe storms. A number of green building programs have already incorporated Resilience into their credit areas. In May 2016, the White House and the National Institute of Building Sciences convened the Conference on Resilient Building Codes to bring increased attention to the important role of codes and standards in achieving a resilient nation. Building performance in extreme weather conditions is critical in this discussion. |
Offsite construction
In an interview with Construction Dive, construction/real-estate firm, Mortenson president, Dan Johnson, said offsite construction technology is making it possible to do offsite assemblies and prefabrication. “If you look at what we believe to be the jobsite of the future, [it is] probably a lot more about assembling components that have been prefabricated in other locations, assembled in other locations, and delivered to the jobsite,” he explained. (The National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) Offsite Construction Council [OSCC] is a good reference on this topic.) With Associated General Contractors (AGC) reporting firms are struggling to find qualified skilled workers to hire, the centralization advantages of offsite and modular construction could be cause for its rise.
District energy and net-zero energy districts
Energy districts are campus-like multiple buildings served by a central plant. The Rocky Mountain Institute’s (RMI’s) “An Integrated Business Model for Net-zero Energy Districts” is a business model for developing net-zero or ultra-low energy districts in a way that is attractive to the district developer, parcel developer, and tenants. The goal is to create a profitable business for an integrated energy services provider, while benefitting the local electric grid and neighboring community.
Deep energy retrofits
When it comes to existing buildings, the goal is to identify scalable, repeatable clean-energy, low-carbon solutions through modeling, measurement, and verification. One such example is the recladding of Boston’s Castle Square Apartments—a building that had its non-insulated brick façade transformed by super-insulated, offsite-constructed insulated metal panels (IMPs). The largest deep energy retrofit ever undertaken in the country, Castle Square’s predictive modeling demonstrated energy reduction by 72 percent with the super-insulated re-clad envelope system envelope representing more than 30 percent of the total. One year of post-project performance reported that performance outcome was 52 percent over baseline. Modeling errors and lack of commissioning at the beginning proved to be the difference. Although not part of this particular project, ASTM E2813-12e1, Standard Practice for Building Enclosure Commissioning, would have been appropriate to specify to ensure enclosure performance.
Deep energy retrofits that include the envelope are a challenge because of longer payback and upfront investment. Life cycle costing versus first costs must be projected with ROI and net present value (NPV) for a sound business case.
