NIBS symposium tackles sustainability, resilient communities
The National Institute of Building Sciences will offer the “Facility Performance and Sustainability Symposium: Setting the Foundation for Resilient Communities.” The event, January 8, is part of Building Innovation 2015 in Washington, D.C.
According to the institute, by making individual buildings that are sustainable and perform at a high level, communities are better able to withstand and recover from disruptive events. This full-day symposium will focus on how to identify and evaluate the appropriate level of facility performance to meet a building owner’s full range of objectives. Particular emphasis will be given to making commercial facilities energy-efficient and heading to zero-energy consumption, with a focus on the critical role that the building enclosure plays in reaching this goal.
Institute officials also said that creating resilient communities require making a series of choices that start with the individual building owner — choices that this session will help owners to make in an informed way — following processes and procedures that lead to better buildings.
Presenters will aim to establish the connection between performance, sustainability, and resilience, and demonstrate how to establish performance-based design objectives and analyze results to support decision-making. Speakers will provide examples of systems, such as the U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA’s) new performance-based P100 Facilities Standards for the Public Buildings Service and the complementary National Performance-Based Design Guide. They will discuss how to perform deep energy retrofits to building enclosure systems, including defining and establishing measurable zero-energy consumption targets for buildings and communities; how effective envelope commissioning and establishing corresponding owner performance requirements leads to successful outcomes; how to evaluate and manage resilience as a performance metric; and, finally, how to use Total Cost of Ownership as the ultimate evaluator of efforts to improve facility performance, sustainability, and resilience.
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