Relating to buildings

U.S. EPA’s Region 8 headquarters.

2010 is shaping up to be the Year of Building Performance, but it could also be called the Year of Ongoing Relationships.

Shortly after a bevy of findings that buildings constructed to meet U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (USGBC-LEED) certification requirements were not always performing as planned, USGBC announced the launch of the Building Performance Initiative. Started in August 2009, it is meant to help building owners and operators understand how to collect and what to do with energy-use data from their green buildings.

A building performance study conducted by Vancouver, Wash.–based New Buildings Institute found that of 121 LEED-certified green buildings, a quarter were performing below the national average. The results for all of them were scattered all over the map. One reason given was a lack of data on actual energy use in a building delivered to stakeholders. Without such data, building operators don’t know how to correct problems. Moreover, tenants aren’t motivated to change habits.

 “If you think about any occupant, they have almost no idea whether it is a good, bad or indifferent building,” Mark Frankel, technical director of New Buildings Institute told Sustainable Industries in August 2009.

While the problem has historically been one building owners and operators are left to solve, more green building designers, engineers and consultants are taking up some of the slack.

Simply tracking and monitoring resource-use data isn’t enough to make sure buildings perform as expected. Someone has to know what to do with the data. In response, some design teams are starting to examine their relationship with building owners and operators after a project is complete.