Performance Matters!  

The design of a new building or the renovation of an existing building usually starts with a set of programmatic goals, objectives, and requirements. Some of these relate to user needs, some to space needs, and some to time and budget constraints. Increasingly, they also relate to a building’s performance in terms of energy usage, daylighting, operating costs, and life-cycle assessment. To gauge this performance during design, computerized analysis is becoming common as owners request it, and building codes and green standards tend to require it. In fact, many owners are seeking, and design firms are striving to create, high-performing buildings which go beyond code minimums and excel in all performance aspects. In this regard, it appears that the conversation on performance is clearly shifting away from ‘why’ and has become more focused on ‘how’ to achieve the desired level of performance. This means that architecture and engineering firms are looking for new and better ways to collaborate to allow for ongoing performance discussions and analyses. It also means that firm-wide processes are required throughout the design and documentation process that incorporate performance analysis as a core task.

Performance-Based Design

It has been observed by many in the design professions that the new normal is to design buildings based on performance as much as on other design criteria. The term “performance-based design” has been used to capture this new approach that is becoming increasingly common. Now, to be clear, the performance of building envelopes, systems, and components have always been important design considerations, However, it has only been fairly recently that computer software has become available that can readily and affordably simulate the wide variety of variables and elements that influence building performance. More traditionally, rudimentary calculation tools or rules of thumb were relied upon because it simply wasn’t possible to do multiple performance analyses quickly or economically enough to make meaningful impacts during the design process. Instead, it became much too common for architects to plow ahead through design based on performance assumptions or generic standards. Then, when final construction documents were completed, they would be turned over to an engineer or other third party to carry out one energy model or other calculation to see how the building performs. That approach brought the inherent risk that the performance would fall short of design or code targets and require some costly redesign to correct it. It also missed a huge opportunity to use energy models to learn which design decisions made the most or least impact on the building’s performance.

Photo courtesy of Sefaira

The use of performance-based design software linked directly into popular 3-D building design software allows design and performance to be developed at the same time on one computer model.

Fortunately, things have changed for the better. Many architects have quickly come to understand that a building’s performance is affected by a great many decisions made from the earliest stages of design all the way through final construction documents. Understanding the impacts of those decisions all along the way not only helps prevent the need for redesigns, it informs the process so the design can be optimized toward all performance goals. Those who have embraced this approach are using performance-based design most effectively.

Photo courtesy of Sefaira

While many things can contribute to the final form of a building, performance is playing more of a role as demands for lower energy use, more daylighting, and better life-cycle costing come into play.

The computer technology making all of this possible starts with the use of popular design software programs. Moving from hand drafting to computer aided drafting (CAD) was a significant step in the past for many design professionals but is now very commonplace. The more recent move to 3-D computer models or design representations including building information modeling (BIM) allows designs to be virtually “built” in three dimensions instead of two-dimensional lines and symbols. Performance-based design (PBD) is the next step that goes beyond computerized visual and informational representations of buildings. It is based on adding on software to a 3-D-based design program, which allows analyses of a building design to be performed within that 3-D model. As such, it can eliminate the need to create a separate energy model of the building or the need to hire others to run a separate analysis since everything can be directly linked to the software already being used to design the building. This is a true game-changing evolution of the design process, which seems to be finally realizing the promise of computer-based design. In essence, PBD allows an analysis to be performed at any step, by any member of the design team, quickly, easily, and affordably.

Form Follows Performance?

The Bauhaus era mantra of “Form follows function” reflected a philosophy of defining the form of a building around the function of spaces, materials, or systems in that building. Today, building form is increasingly being influenced and even defined by the performance of that building. This is readily seen in designs where occupied areas are opened up to the outdoors, roofs and ceilings are sloped to take advantage of sunlight, and materials are selected based on their ability to protect from, absorb, or reflect weather conditions.

The PBD approach to building design seeks to optimize outcomes so that performance is enhanced by design, not compromised by it. It is an ongoing part of the design process during which building performance is continuously analyzed by assessing the impacts of design changes on things such as energy use, cost, daylighting, thermal comfort, and environmental impact. To do so, it applies industry-based analyses to building-design items such as form and massing, the site where it is located, the materials used, and the make-up of the construction.

The software available to carry out performance-based design also helps design teams to see, in real time, whether the buildings they are designing are on track to meet performance standards or certifications such as LEED, Green Globes, Architecture 2030, or the English BREEAM standard. Most of the available software uses an analysis engine for energy-performance calculations developed for public use by the U.S. Department of Energy known as EnergyPlus. There are also industry-standard engines for daylighting inputs and analysis. The software is streamlined enough that it is very easy to perform numerous analyses quickly and easily such that many different design options can be looked at in a single day, dramatically faster than using traditional separate energy modeling. This software can then be used as the basis to demonstrate compliance with the appropriate performance standard or certification.

Photo courtesy of Sefaira

The SmithGroupJJR has taken the approach of incorporating performance-based design into every project and among every design team member.

Integrating Performance into Design

When fully integrated into a design process, PBD provides better and more accurate awareness of the impact that design decisions have on building performance. At the outset, project teams can establish the appropriate performance goals and prioritize them compared to other project goals. Then analyses can be run on different design schemes or variations in order to compare the different performance results. Depending on the magnitude of difference between schemes or elements, the design team can begin to make informed design decisions about how to maximize performance or where to make adjustments by learning which elements don’t provide enough benefit to pursue. Then more time can be devoted to optimizing the best overall design option that meets all project objectives in the most cost-effective manner. By default, then, this approach makes PBD relevant for every project, not just for those labeled ‘high performing.’

As an example of this “every project” applicability, consider the case of the SmithGroupJJR, which is one of the oldest firms in the country with offices across the United States and in China. Its success with performance-based design comes from a very basic, yet powerful, approach: the firm simply practices it early and often as a normal and natural part of every design process. To be more specific, it has embraced the premise that designers are able to make PBD an integral part of their own workflow. That means performance analysis is no longer the purview of one specialist in the firm, but rather is able to be used and integrated into design by everyone. Don Posson, vice president of the SmithGroupJJR, points out how the firm is doing this: “We start using it in the conceptual and early design stages, where it is led by the architect and assisted by the engineers. As we move into more systems-based analysis, the process becomes led by the engineers and assisted by the architects. That way all of the key decision makers are involved all the way through.” In short, the firm has equipped and empowered its design professionals with the right computer tools to inform their decision-making process while creating a fully integrated, seamless, and effective work flow.

To illustrate how this approach plays out in practice, the firm recently worked on a new construction project consisting of 75,000 square feet of medical office building space located in northern California. Project Architect Jon Riddle and his colleague, Associate Kim Swanson, used PBD to assess this project throughout its progress, thereby enhancing the team’s understanding of the building performance, as well as adding to the firm’s design capabilities and energy-performance portfolio.

Photo courtesy of Sefaira

PBD analyses allow individual strategies to be looked at or a combination of strategies to be considered to determine the best overall solution for a particular building design.

Initially, four unique and fairly well-developed design options had been completed, represented by design massing strategies of 1) an atrium, 2) a courtyard, 3) an interlocking arrangement, and 4) a plaza. Energy and daylighting performance was not a specific project goal per se; however, the team needed to meet rigorous California Title 24 energy code requirements. Riddle used PBD to compare the energy performance of the four options and found them to be fairly close in overall energy use with Energy Use Intensity (EUI) ratings between 41–45 kBTU/square foot/year. It was determined that the atrium design best met the design team’s programmatic performance requirements and aesthetic intent. While its energy use was higher than other options, it was fully acceptable for the project’s goals and code requirements. This basic exercise introduced the team to an important aspect of performance-based design: optimizing performance is relative to the entire scope of design considerations. In other words, a given project may or may not accommodate aggressive performance goals, but every project benefits from well-informed and holistic decision making.

With the best overall basic design selected, Riddle and Swanson then set out to see how they could further improve performance and reduce the EUI. To do so, they used a simple four-step process. First, they analyzed the details of the performance data and observed that while lighting and plug loads were basically fixed due to the building use, the cooling load was a potential area for improvement. They recognized that lowering the cooling load can often decrease the size of the HVAC system, resulting in lower capital costs, lower operating costs, and/or more usable square footage. Second, they sought to identify potential strategies that could be used to achieve the lowered cooling load. The team determined that external loads (e.g. solar gain) would likely be the most fruitful to be explored and managed. Third, they began the process of trying different strategies, recognizing that the successful use of performance-based design is not a purely linear process. Rather, it is more iterative, meaning that it involves some back and forth, even some trial and error based on educated assumptions. They started with the selected design as a baseline and then analyzed one strategy at a time to determine the net improvement (or not) on the cooling load. Each of these analyses then provided quick feedback on where to focus additional design efforts. In this case, the strategies fell into three categories:

• Glazing Ratios: Lowering the glazing ratio helped lower solar gain, and in turn, helped lower cooling capacity.
• Shading Strategies: Adding brise soleil shading improved performance; analysis also showed that north facade shading of any kind was unnecessary, providing a potential capital cost savings.
• Materials: Given the early stage of this project, understanding materials’ effects on performance was key. The team learned that the core structural material and glazing’s solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) stood to affect cooling capacity.

With a newly gained understanding of design elements that were driving performance, the final step was to present their findings and design recommendations. After reviewing the multiple strategies, the best approach proved to be combining them. This required treating the combination as a separate analysis, since the team recognized that strategies interacting with each other are not always additive (e.g. three separate strategies that save 5 percent each does not mean combining them will save 15 percent).

By taking the design to this next step, Riddle and Swanson showed that even given a fixed massing and siting, performance gains could still be made through glazing ratios, shading, and material selection. Their selected combination of strategies proved to be very effective—the Energy Use Intensity of the building dropped from the original EUI of 45 to an EUI of 35 due in large part to achieving a significant reduction in cooling load. This savings in cooling also translated into a 25 percent reduction in equipment size and a 9 percent projected reduction in annual utility costs. In addition to the project benefits of the effort they led, it also provided valuable internal experience and a case study for their colleagues’ reference, as well as a marketable example to demonstrate the firm’s capabilities to future clients.

Photo courtesy of Sefaira

Lorton Volunteer Fire Station (top) designed by Lemay Erickson Willcox Architects, Reston, VA, and Jefferson Fire Station (bottom) designed by Hughes Group Architects, Sterling, VA, all in collaboration with Brinjac Engineering using performance-based design.

Improving Performance Through Better Collaboration

As we’ve just seen, implementing PBD just for the architects within a firm can already provide significant results. Of course, on a building project of any size, architects also need to work with mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineers as key members of the design team. In order to be effective, all of these project team members need to be able to participate in and respond to different performance-based design strategies, whether leading the process or assisting in it. That means the reporting of results from analyzing different design options, solutions, and equipment choices needs to be readily available to all. In this regard, some of the best PBD software offers a shared environment for architects and engineers to use collaboratively. It provides different access points to the platform for different user types, recognizing that, for example, architects have different needs and a different level of knowledge about certain aspects compared to building engineers, and vice versa. Enabling this type of collaboration allows every stakeholder to participate in the PBD process in a way that suits his or her knowledge level and workflow.

Using the Cloud for Collaboration

Most of us are aware that the cloud is simply a remote, central computer platform that is accessible via the Internet by multiple people regardless of their geographic location. This makes it very easy to share information with others whether for personal or professional uses. Not surprisingly, software for general building design and construction is making more and more use of the cloud for information sharing, collaboration, and data storage. Especially when using it for analysis, there is another key advantage of cloud computing too, namely speed, since it is often possible to run computer calculations in the cloud in a fraction of the time it would take to run on a local office computer.

In the case of PBD applied to cloud computing, the main benefit is not so much about sharing information files, but about directly collaborating on the same project without everyone having to build their own model. By creating a central place where a 3-D computer model of the building resides linked to performance-based design software, all members of the design team can work together regardless of their office location. Hence, everyone is able to participate in the analysis on the same model and access the same performance information.

In practice, performance-based design collaboration using the cloud can take many forms. It can enable architects to connect a 3-D BIM model with the PBD program while still allowing for additional architectural detail and information to be added. For mechanical and electrical engineers, it means that they can do their work based on the latest version of an architect-generated BIM file and provide feedback to the architects on how to optimize the interface between the energy-conserving features of the building construction and the energy-consuming systems within it. As different design and performance strategies are considered, cloud-based PBD collaboration allows for each strategy to be shared for all to see, assess, analyze, and provide input on how to improve the performance or other aspects of the design. Based on all of this, design firms and project teams are discovering that the use of the cloud for PBD supports a fully collaborative approach that is incredibly effective in helping to optimize performance, increase computing speed, and involve all team members.

Putting Collaboration to Work

As an example of particularly successful collaboration, we can look at two projects that included Brinjac Engineering as the MEP firm on two project teams for the same client. Brinjac is an award-winning firm with a diverse portfolio of government, institutional, educational, and industrial building projects with approximately 80 professional, technical, and support personnel. Recently, the firm was approached about working on two fire stations in Fairfax County, Virginia. The RFP required substantial analysis during the schematic design phase, including energy simulation, exploration of envelope-related energy-efficiency measures, and life-cycle cost analysis. Performance-based design software was a huge advantage in this case because it not only facilitated Brinjac’s delivery of these requirements quickly and on budget, it also enabled the firm to work closely with the architects and the client throughout the process. “A conventional design process would have had us use a significant portion of our fee in the first phase,” says Philip Wright, who led both fire station project teams at Brinjac. “Performance-based design software allowed us to deliver on the RFP requirements quickly and cost effectively for the firm.”

Work began with envelope optimization which quickly helped them discover what not to do as much as anything else. The real-time analysis capabilities of PBD software allowed the engineers and architects to study envelope-optimization scenarios together. Their aim was to find the most cost-effective strategies for reducing the building’s energy use and associated energy costs. Using ASHRAE 90.1-2010 as a baseline, which is already quite efficient in terms of the building envelope, the team discovered that many traditional energy-efficiency strategies yielded minimal savings, and were ultimately not a good investment. For example, early analysis showed that going beyond an R-40 roof resulted in marginal energy savings, and that the money could be better spent on improved lighting or more efficient mechanical systems. These results allowed the team to avoid costly investments that would have provided little value to the client, and instead prioritize the strategies that offered the biggest savings.

Photo courtesy of Sefaira

A collaboration between the architects, engineers, and client allowed more accurate comparisons between different mechanical systems proposed for two new Fairfax County fire stations.

This collaboration extended to the client too, in this case representatives from Fairfax County Government, who were engaged to explore the impact of various mechanical system options. For instance, a comparison of a variable air volume (VAV) rooftop unit, a constant volume RTU, and a variable refrigerant flow (VRF) system was undertaken. The results, and in particular the feedback on energy efficiency and energy costs, were key inputs to the discussion allowing the team to come to a fast decision. “We could quickly modify the analysis to match the county’s typical set-points, operations, and other parameters, and could see the impact on utility costs immediately,” says Wright. “This increased our confidence in the analysis and helped everyone align on the benefits of different solutions.” The result is a focused design with an anticipated 20 percent reduction in energy use from the baseline.

The fire stations are still in design, with construction scheduled for 2017. The integrated design process used has set both projects on a path to a more energy-efficient building for the client, improved collaboration among the project team, and has resulted in a more streamlined, cost-effective process overall. Because the PBD analyses took less than half the time of conventional tools, the design team was able to deliver better insight more quickly, resulting in earlier design alignment and better building performance.

With a good understanding of how performance-based design works in general, particularly when collaborating with others, it is worth taking a closer look at applying it to different phases of the design process. In the next three sections, we will look at early design, detailed design, and final design/construction documents in the context of using PBD.

Performance in the Early Design Process

As seen in some of the examples we have looked at already, performance-based design is most effective when it is used from the outset during the early design stages of a project. A building’s performance relative to resource use, occupant comfort, and environmental impact can be heavily influenced during the conceptual and schematic design phases. Designers who fail to consider performance during these earliest stages of design often miss significant opportunities to deliver high-performing and exceptional designs. Further, early analysis and collaboration significantly reduce the risk of missing performance targets and therefore reduce the risk of expensive rework. At this stage, the primary benefit is in performing comparative analyses between different building-massing concepts or building envelope strategies.

In early design, implicit decisions about building performance are being made with every design choice. Therefore, having quick and easy feedback on the performance impacts of those design choices is invaluable. For example, a building shape that increases the overall exterior wall area will be subject to more thermal exposure than a design that is geometrically more efficient. PBD software linked with design software is incredibly useful at identifying how much of an impact that difference makes in the conceptual stage of building design. Basically, it allows architects and other design professionals to move fluidly and fast to bring fundamental ideas to life while seeing the impacts of the choices made.

Using a Single Design and Performance Model

The benefits of starting from the outset with PBD have been fully realized by Sterner Design, an architectural design and consulting practice dedicated to creating a truly sustainable built environment. A recent project of the firm was a net zero energy single-family residence in Iowa with 2,400 square feet and two stories using partial underground or earth bermed construction. The firm started design from the beginning by creating a 3-D computerized model using available software with PBD software added on. The beauty of this approach is that the same model was used, developed, and refined throughout the entire project for design, presentation, documentation, and analysis. In this case, there was never a need to create any separate models or prepare separate drawings other than those that were extracted directly from the same model all the way through.

Photo courtesy of SketchUp

Sterner Design used a single computer model beginning in early design all the way through the design process to create a net zero energy, well daylit, partially underground residence in Iowa.

The firm’s first performance investigation focused on how to achieve good daylight in a house that is partially underground. Carl Sterner, lead designer and principal of Sterner Design, approached daylight from an experiential point of view. The goal was to achieve 200 lux (typical light level for a residence) through daylight alone for at least 60 percent of the year in the primary living areas: living room, dining room, kitchen, and study. In addition, the design needed to ensure good daylight distribution across these spaces to avoid uncomfortably bright and dim areas, despite having windows primarily on one orientation.

Computerized daylight analysis was used in the earliest design phase of the project to investigate the impact of different conceptual design options on daylight penetration and distribution across the home. Designs were not necessarily ruled out due to poor performance; instead, the analysis was used to understand what mitigating steps would need to be taken if these designs were pursued. Options with a narrow floor plate (20 feet or less) were ideal from a daylighting standpoint; deeper floor plates would require more creative (and perhaps expensive) solutions such as skylights.

In addition to daylight, the goal was to reduce overall energy use to the point where the remaining needs could be reasonably generated on-site. However, Iowa, like much of the American Midwest, poses a difficult climatic challenge. With a mixed climate, it is very cold in the winter but quite hot and humid in the summer. To reduce energy use, proposed strategies needed to keep both cooling and heating requirements in balance. Following several design iterations, the team arrived at a concept that combined daylight and energy performance with the client’s requirements and budget. At this stage, PBD analysis was used to further refine the design and address potential problem areas. By combining both passive strategies (natural ventilation, an optimized building envelope, and shading devices) and efficient mechanical systems (ground-source heat pump and energy-recovery ventilation), Sterner was able to achieve a 79 percent reduction in energy use compared to the code baseline and meet the targeted on-site energy budget. To offset the remaining energy use and achieve net zero energy status, the design incorporates roof-mounted solar photovoltaic panels on the large south-facing roof.

Photo courtesy of Sefaira

Performance-based design used in the earliest design stages helped architects understand how to reduce the energy requirements on a custom residential project by 79 percent, making on-site solar electric generation viable.

Detailed Design Development and Analysis

Once the basic form of a building and the overall design strategies are determined, other specific strategies can be investigated in greater detail. Building facades are a good example of something that many architects spend a lot of detailed design attention on. In commercial buildings, the relevant building-performance issues commonly include the use of glazing to allow the admission of daylight without glare, controlling solar heat gain through treated glass and/or shading, and regulating heat transfer through opaque areas. PBD software can be used to consider alternative building-facade designs by finding the right balance between different criteria and optimizing a given facade treatment (e.g. shading devices, materiality, etc.) all by using site-specific weather data and project-specific design inputs. Further, it also allows for each facade of the building to be addressed separately so that different design solutions can be considered for each as appropriate. Altogether, this allows for optimization of the total building.

Facade Design Analysis

The design firm of Sheppard Robson uses PBD as a means to combine aesthetics and performance in innovative facade design. The design team set out to create an appropriate design aesthetic for the Bechtel House, a 322,900-square-foot office building in London. The goal for the facade was to optimize it for good energy and daylight performance while working toward high aesthetic and regulatory requirements for the project as a whole. The building mass was designed in two “blocks” with one on the north side sitting behind the one on the south side. With that basic layout determined, it came time to work out the details of refining the facade design.

Photo courtesy of Sefaira

Sheppard Robson was able to optimize the design of the building facade of the Bechtel House office building by using PBD to determine the best balance between daylight, energy use, and aesthetics.

The team started by focusing its attention on the south block, as it suffered from more solar heat gain exposure than the north block. They created simple 3-D computer model variations of the south block, starting the PBD analysis on a fully glazed base case, then testing options with reduced glazing ratios. By comparing energy use, cooling loads, and daylight levels, the team settled on an option with the optimum glazing ratio before any shading was added. Then, using real-time analysis in PBD, Sheppard Robson was able to understand the impact of different types and depths of shading systems, starting with about 20 different options. These included 0.5 meter horizontal projections, 0.5 meter vertical projections, a combination of 0.5 meter horizontal and vertical projections, and a 1.0 meter horizontal projection. Investigating even further, the team also tested a tapered vertical fin, a tapered vertical fin with double horizontal shading, and double-height chamfered panels. After reviewing and analyzing the results, the team found the most effective strategies for reducing cooling, energy use, and unwanted southern solar gains were an optimized tapered vertical fin, a tapered vertical fin plus two horizontal projections, and the double-height chamfered fins. More specifically, it found that the optimized tapered vertical shading device worked best for the north facade, and the tapered fin plus two horizontal projections was best for the south facade.

Photo courtesy of Sefaira

Different shading strategies on the facade of the Bechtel House in London were analyzed and compared for both performance and aesthetics then optimized accordingly.

Of course, all of this facade refinement also needed to take into account other design elements, such as the interior ceiling heights and the location of mechanical systems. Therefore, the design team appropriately compared the use of a traditional suspended acoustical ceiling with concealed ductwork against a chilled beam system that used an exposed soffit for its air delivery system. Sun path diagrams were then developed within the PBD model to understand how these different HVAC systems would look, interact with the facades, and affect daylight levels within the interior spaces. By comparing the impact on daylight penetration in this way, a total, coordinated understanding of the building performance could be determined in more detail. Based on this work, the design team selected the chilled beam and exposed soffit option, opening up sightlines to the sky and allowing daylight deeper into the room. It was also determined that window-sill heights that matched desk heights would not impede daylight levels or views and would provide more insulated wall area than a full glazing option. Therefore, that approach became a part of the final design as well.

Final Design and Construction Documentation

Designs that are optimized using 3-D computer models with PBD may require significantly less additional analysis in the final design and construction documents phases than typical designs. While some performance goals will always require predictive analysis to be performed in the final stages of design, or even after CDs are complete, PBD projects have already benefitted from comparative optimizations well before these late stages.

What is typically most important at this point is to be sure that the final construction documents show the same building materials and systems as those modeled for performance. Fortunately, 3-D computer model programs typically make it very straightforward to extract floor plans, sections, schedules, details, and other common construction documents directly from the model. Hence, if set up correctly, all of the relevant information can simply be transferred directly to 2-D drawings without needing to re-create anything. Alternatively, in some cases, the entire model can be used by contractors for pricing and construction without the need for many 2-D representational drawings. Either way, the computer model also makes it very easy to create revisions, which may become necessary while PBD tools continue to provide feedback on the impact of those revisions.

In some cases, the construction drawings extracted from a 3-D computer model can retain some of their three-dimensional appearance to communicate more effectively the performance-based construction assemblies and details needed. For example, Brandon Walsh of Robertson Walsh Design provides some outstanding construction documents, all created first in 3-D computer models. Everyone involved recognizes that being able to see things in 3-D helps all team members, including clients, to better understand the form and organization of the building design, which in turn helps decisions get made quicker to keep things moving forward. The firm has been so pleased with the results that Walsh commented, “We’re going to throw CAD out the door! The process of labeling and dimensioning in the model software was far superior to CAD; was easier to see and faster to complete for us.” He also points out that any engineers the firm works with receive exports right from their model, meaning it works beautifully for collaboration.

In the end, it all comes down to developing one computer model that can be used to explore the design, analyze the performance of the building, produce all the construction drawings, and could even get used for information sharing within a firm or marketing to other clients.

Photo courtesy of SketchUp

Robertson Walsh Design uses computer models as the basis of construction drawings that communicate the design in both 2-D and 3-D images.

Conclusion

Three-dimensional computer modeling linked with performance-based design is rapidly transforming the design professions and the building industry. Hundreds of architecture and engineering firms are already implementing this process to create buildings that perform as intended while producing great designs that function well for owners and users. Today, these firms are using this combination to stay ahead of the demands of owners, meet increasingly higher standards for performance, and improve their own internal design and workflow processes. Tomorrow, it’s easy to imagine firms of all sizes will be using this approach just to stay current and competitive with everybody else.

Peter J. Arsenault, FAIA, NCARB, LEED AP is an architect and green building consultant who has authored over 100 continuing education and technical publications as part of a nationwide practice. www.linkedin.com/in/pjaarch