ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) installed new officers and directors at its 2010 annual meeting held June 26-30.

The new president is Lynn G. Bellenger, PE, Fellow ASHRAE, partner, Pathfinder Engineers & Architects, Rochester, N.Y. Bellenger is ASHRAE certified as a Building Energy Modeling Professional and a High Performance Building Design Professional. She is the first female president in the society’s 116-year history.

Bellenger’s presidential theme is “Modeling a Sustainable World,” and she noted that in energy simulation, daylight analysis, CFD and BIM software, there are powerful resources that can be used effectively in an integrated design process for new buildings and in analyzing retrofit opportunities in existing buildings.

“Our biggest challenge is implementing integrated design in daily practice,” she said. “The traditional approach where the architect designs the building shape, orientation, and envelope and then transmits the drawings to the mechanical and electrical engineers for their design is a silo approach that misses the rich opportunities for optimizing building performance through a collaborative approach from the beginning. It is going to require a real cultural shift in our industry to transform the design process, and it’s a shift that has to occur if we are going to reach our goal of net-zero-energy buildings.”

Publication date: 07/19/2010