The Alliance Promotes Design for High Performance Buildings
Thanks to funding from The Alliance, Ecotope may be able to offer a wide range of consulting services to your commercial building project. The Alliance is a non-profit group of electric utilities, state governments, public interest groups and industry representatives committed to bringing affordable, energy-efficient products and services to the marketplace. Their BetterBricks Advisor Program aims to integrate energy and resource conservation concepts throughout the design phase to produce higher performing buildings. The BetterBricks program contends that well-designed buildings are energy efficient and lead to higher productivity and worker contentment. In short, their philosophy is "Great spaces are great for business."
Ecotope or other Advisors can participate in every phase of building design and construction. The goals of the Advisor Service are detailed below:
- Encourage the formation of an expanded and integrated design team to develop a long-term project vision, and to assist all of the principals in addressing building performance goals
- Facilitate energy design/performance workshops
- Help the design team to formulate project efficiency goals and a design scope covering HVAC system performance, life-cycle cost guidelines, building envelope performance goals, commissioning, etc.
- Assist with the identification of mechanical, lighting, and building envelope alternatives
- Assist the architect with the integration of various systems, including the mechanical system, with architectural design requirements
- With the cooperation of the Lighting Design Lab, initiate consideration of a daylighting strategy
- In tandem with the Energy Ideas Clearinghouse, provide research support
- Obtain support from any available utility programs
- Develop specific envelope performance guidelines that may be used to target mechanical equipment sizing
- Initiate development of control and commissioning strategies and building operation guidelines
- Apply building modeling to estimate building thermal loads and to evaluate and implement efficiency measures
- Offer life-cycle cost analysis of range of alternative systems
- Review preliminary cost estimates to accurately account for the efficiency and system integration savings and to eliminate capacity, equipment, and control redundancies
- Provide linkages to other key services to maximize energy and business performance:
- Support the development of specifications for those systems that may be new to design team members
- Provide efficient building envelope details
- Help develop documentation to obtain utility or tax incentives
- Provide contractors with enough information to develop accurate costs for proposed systems
- Provide “third party” design review services for design/build proposals
- Evaluate the potential impact of any “Value Engineering” alternates on building performance
- Evaluate the impacts of proposed change orders on building systems
- Support design team with construction site visits
- Assist with developing of a commissioning plan, the selection of commissioning agents, and procurement of commissioning services
- Verify implementation of effective building operator education
- Offer post-occupancy evaluation capabilities