henry l. Verde
High-Performance Buildings
The built environment forms a backbone that is critical to maintaining and
enhancing economic growth, competitiveness, productivity, and quality of life.
The construction industry in the United States contributes more than one trillion
dollars to the yearly gross domestic product , but based on government statistics
like those shown in Figure 1, it continues to stagnate or even lose productivity,
unlike most other large-scale U.S. negocios.
The construction industry is characterized by a large number of small clients,
vendors, designers and contractors who are often not in a position to provide lead-
ership in adopting new technology and practice. Other industry segments, con
different structures, have seen more rapid change and significant increases in the
productivity of both design and construction. Por ejemplo, in the process and
power industry, the capital cost per kilowatt hour of output from a power plant
has declined steadily over the past decade.
The construction industry as a whole, and the government agencies that work
with it, have not invested significantly in research and development , and have not
adequately demonstrated the technologies that do exist. A menudo, new methods are
tried out only on individual projects, and the result is slow adoption of new tech-
nology in the marketplace. Where new technology is developed, it is most often
pursued to fill an identified market niche rather than being an industry-wide inno-
vación.
In looking for the reasons for this low rate of productivity, actuación, y
adoption of technology, it is important to consider the role of codes and standards
in building design and construction in maintaining the status quo. As currently
structured, the industry is primarily driven by codes and standards that establish
minimum requirements; estos, Sucesivamente, are based largely on typical industry per-
formance levels. Por lo tanto, standards typically only prescribe minimum perform-
ance requirements that can be met by most of the design, construction, and man-
ufacturing community. An owner or builder who wants to do better than the min-
henry l. Green is President of the National Institute of Building Sciences. Before com-
ing to the Institute in 2008, Señor. Green was Director of the Bureau of Construction
Codes for the State of Michigan. He is also a Past President of the International Code
Council, developer of the International Building Code. The National Institute of
Building Sciences is a private, nonprofit organization established by Congress as a sin-
gle authoritative national source to make findings and advise both the public and pri-
vate sectors on the use of building science and technology to achieve national goals and
benefits.
© 2009 henry l. Verde
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henry l. Verde
Cifra 1. Productivity Index, 1964-2001.
imum will find little in the existing codes and standards to ensure that a building
will, En realidad, provide higher levels of performance.
Además, the nation’s building community uses thousands of standards pro-
duced by hundreds of standards development organizations. While a few large
organizations write multiple standards, most groups write only a handful.
Standards do provide a degree of uniformity in a complex and sometimes frag-
mented industry. When master or guide specifications for a building refer to stan-
dards, they impact the entire design of the building, including the levels of quality
and performance for selecting and procuring building materials, products, y
systems under contractual agreements. When standards are adopted into building
codes, they set the requirements for verifying that materials, products, y sistemas
meet a jurisdiction’s minimum levels of performance for the safety, salud, y
welfare of the occupants.
There are only a limited number of standards that significantly exceed the
minimum requirements. If a single building’s attributes like energy efficiency or
safety are maximized without paying attention to other important attributes, el
other attributes can end up being sub-optimal. De este modo, new requirements are need-
ed to optimize each attribute within the context of overall building performance.
A suite of new high-performance standards would enable designers, developers
and owners to produce buildings that focus on enhanced performance rather than
minimum requirements. Not only will high-performance buildings use much less
energía; they also have the potential to improve the health, comfort, and produc-
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High-Performance Buildings
tivity of their occupants. The United States needs to develop an overall strategy to
achieve high-performance infrastructure; that strategy must integrate and opti-
mize all the major high-performance attributes including resilience, energy effi-
ciencia, sustainability, seguridad, seguridad, durability, productivity, functionality, y
operational maximization.
Owners in both the public and private sectors who seek a higher level of over-
all performance have not had access to criteria upon which they could base design
solutions that will create and maintain greater performance. Perhaps more impor-
tantly, they have typically had no compelling reason to request designs or features
that exceeded the minimum performance levels found in most U.S. codes and
standards.
But high-performance standards open the door to enhanced value. That value
may derive from reduced energy and operating costs, lowered maintenance costs,
improved functionality and pro-
ductivity, maximized protection
and security, enhanced environ-
mental conditions, sustainability,
building durability, or capacity to
continue operating after a cata-
strophic event. Whatever its source,
that value has the potential to offer
building owners dramatically
greater returns on their invest-
mentos. If high-performance stan-
dards permit
the designers,
builders, and operators of build-
ings to better understand the
cost/benefit implications of design decisions, they can lead to owners deciding to
make optional improvements to the building’s performance, well above the
requirements set by minimum codes and standards.
High-performance standards
open the door to enhanced
valor… with potential to
offer building owners
dramatically greater returns
on their investments.
It is clear, based on past programs to advance building design, that only a sys-
tems approach will achieve those goals in the future. Whether we are changing only
one component or rehabilitating the whole system, effective approaches require
advice from experienced practitioners of all types. And the value of our actions will
be determined by the total performance that results. For all these reasons, el
United States needs new metrics and benchmarks, as well as a new set of verifica-
tion and validation standards, to ensure that we reach our overall performance
objetivos.
At least seven key components of high-performance value must be considered
while buildings are being designed and constructed:
1. Design should consider a building from cradle to grave and look for ways to
reuse the existing parts in the next-generation systems.
2. Design should stress for durability.
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henry l. Verde
3. Design should aim for energy efficiency and efficient use of materials.
4. Design should make buildings efficient enough to justify the economic use of
renewable resources.
5. Better tools and standards for validating and evaluating performance must be
desarrollado.
6. Commissioning must be used as a part of the design and construction process:
from design intent, through the construction period, and including some post-
occupancy tests.
7. Predicted performance must be verified against actual data.
One of the most important attributes of a high-performance building is its inher-
ent durability, es decir., its long-term performance. By appreciably extending the serv-
ice life of buildings, owners can reduce life-cycle costs and achieve major savings
from less frequent retrofits and replacements. A second critical consideration is the
incorporation of appropriate passive energy efficiency and sustainability measures
that lead to savings from smaller and less-expensive equipment and less fuel use.
The concept of high-performance buildings comes at a time when the design
and construction community is being pulled in many directions and needs a
framework for balancing competing interests. Several developments confirm that
this is the right time to begin a paradigm shift in the production of the built envi-
ambiente: the increasing popularity of sustainable or “green” buildings, the need to
address post-9/11 safety and security concerns, the new contractual and delivery
methods available to builders, and the market mechanisms driving institutional
investors to seek out energy and other efficiencies in their asset portfolios.
The emergence of the need for high-performance buildings provides a valu-
able opportunity to look deeply at some fundamental possibilities in terms of
organización, procurement, investigación, and technology. We cannot afford to waste
the current positive attention surrounding the links between the built environ-
ment and energy awareness, energy efficiency, sustainability, asset management,
and technological feasibility.
The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) de 2007 established a new
and aggressive plan for achieving energy independence in the nation’s building
stock by the year 2030. The act requires that federal buildings (both new buildings
and renovations) reduce their consumption of energy from fossil fuels on the
order of 55 percent by the year 2010 y 100 percent by 2030. The Act also requires
that sustainable design principles be applied to the design and construction of fed-
eral buildings. En tono rimbombante, the Act defines high-performance buildings as those
that integrate and optimize on a life-cycle basis all major high-performance attrib-
utes, including energy conservation, the environment, seguridad, seguridad, durability,
accessibility, costs and benefits, productivity, sustainability, functionality, y
operational considerations.
We have little choice but to make the EISA timetable. The demand for natural
resources is fast exceeding supply on this planet. Environmental preservation and
económico, social, and technological development must be seen as interdependent
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High-Performance Buildings
and complementary concepts, where economic competitiveness and ecological
sustainability are complementary aspects of the common goal of improving the
quality of life.
In many ways sustainability is at the forefront of the environmental move-
mento: taking a holistic-systems approach to defining preferred performance; push-
ing the science of life-cycle assessment; asking the tough questions about environ-
mental impacts; balancing environmental, económico, and social considerations;
y, most importantly, responding to demand by providing and communicating
the keys to responsible design. Environmental performance indicators cover the
areas of siting/smart growth, energía, atmosphere, water efficiency, public health
and well-being, environmentally responsible materials, and social responsibility.
Better energy efficiency and decreased aggregate energy usage lie at the heart of
sustainable buildings when compared with similarly benchmarked systems,
because they can help reduce the use of fossil fuels.
Building functionality means how well a building can meet the needs and serv-
ices of its users. Maintainability is its capacity to be serviced easily in terms of the
functional requirements. Functionality establishes a building’s basic characteristic
or mission, and maintainability indicates its capacity to maintain that function
con el tiempo. Today our society’s focus is on environmental sustainability. But if we
design highly sustainable buildings with poor functionality, that retards productiv-
idad, what have we really accomplished? Despite our many standards and protocols
for maintainability, relatively little is in place on functionality. A family of useful
functionality standards is emerging; though they are not yet widely used, a few fed-
eral agencies and large corporations have made a start.
Because so many of the nation’s buildings suffer significantly from deferred
maintenance, much of the building stock is functionally obsolete if not structural-
ly deficient. We are not going to reach the EISA goals by improving these buildings
with the best of existing technology. From a standpoint of design and engineering,
transforming this building stock to high-performance buildings will require an
unprecedented research effort that will allow us to insert in these buildings a whole
new array of advanced materials and intelligent systems.
The deteriorated state of the nation’s built environment has led the research
community to look at using alternative materials that cost and weigh less, perform
mejor, are more durable, and require less maintenance. Over the past decade, el
industry and research institutions have developed a large variety of these new
advanced materials and intelligent systems for buildings and for other purposes.
This is an important step in the right direction and a foundation for further
improvements. We will have to systematically take advantage of these new tech-
nológico, and their successors from future research, by moving aggressively to
high-performance codes and standards and to accelerated research if we are to suc-
ceed in addressing the problem of deteriorating, obsolescent, unsustainable, y
vulnerable buildings. A high-performance built environment must be our goal.
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