To my surprise Leonart explained that the majority of his savings were found not from technical solutions, but from meeting with building engineers (teknist forualtae), earning their trust, then helping them maximize the building’s energy performance with simple set point and schedule adjustments.  G.Z ‘Charlie’ Brown has a saying (from the University of Oregon’s Energy Studies in Building’s Laboratory) that “Buildings don’t use energy, people do.”  Leonart’s approach was inspiring from the ‘operations’ standpoint and emphasized the importance of not only designing good buildings, but also having good people to operate them.  

Fore Solutions is looking forward to working more with Leonart and the Vasakronan team as we help them certify their existing building stock under the LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance 2009 program.  We hope the certifications will allow Vasakronan to benchmark their existing practices while finding ways to improve their already high standards for building operations and maintenance. 

Colin Schless, Assistant Project Manager and Energy Analyst at Fore Solutions, looks forward to more world travel.

The 30,000 participants of this enormous conference got a good look at USGBC President Rick Fedrizzi up on the big screen at Toronto’s professional hockey arena, as the USGBC celebrated – rightly so – their first conference outside the U.S. and 10th Greenbuild. We could celebrate along with them, since Fore Solutions’ staff have attended all ten Greenbuilds in addition to the early events leading up to the first Greenbuild.

There was a loud buzz in the air for going beyond LEED to achieving the Living Building Challenge, Net Zero Energy, Regenerative Design or Passivhaus standards. Speakers described their experiences with bringing building projects up to these higher standards of “sustainability” and showed that these kind of projects, while still very new to the market, are very possible and replicable.

The conference theme – NEXT – encouraging participants to ask the question, “What’s next for the green building field” rightly fit the dialogue of the week. A favorite session for many was Amory Lovins’ morning session on Rocky Mountain Institute’s “Re-inventing Fire,” offering hope of achieving a 158% bigger U.S. economy in 2050 without oil, coal, and nuclear energy.

My personal favorites included a session on Biophilic Design during which Bill Browning, formally of RMI and now running Terrapin Bright Green, described the principles of bringing nature into the built environment. These include (1) Nature in the Space, which can be achieved, for example, with indoor plants or windows; (2) Natural Analogs, such as using stone and wood as building elements; and (3) Nature of the Space, which considers the type of environments that humans gravitate to, like grasslands. I also really enjoyed the session on the Living Building Challenge, during which I learned about successful projects on the West Coast and New York and dreamed about the projects Fore Solutions may someday work on in New England.

And of course, the crème de la crème was the annual Umbrella Green party, co-sponsored by Fore Solutions, on Thursday night. This year, this invite-only event was held at a downtown nightclub, the Guvernment, and, whew, green building people can dance! Fore Solutions also claimed a bit of limelight from having two of our projects featured on big boards at the event, including the LEED Gold Hannaford Grocery Store in Duanesburg, NY and the LEED Gold Pearl Place Multi-Family Mid-rise in Portland, ME. These projects are featured by the USGBC’s Education Committee as part of their case study pilot program.

What could have been better? It’s hard to fault the USGBC for raising interest in green building to such a level that navigating the many floors and sections of the cavernous Toronto Convention Center left its impression on my calves and back. And, I guess I can’t blame the USGBC either for bringing such a crowd to Toronto that networking opportunities suffered a bit – for the same reasons that they say you get to know more people in a small town than a big city.

Regardless, I still came home with my stack of business cards, my faith in humanity renewed, and fond memories of my boss, Gunnar Hubbard, boggie-ing with other sweaty green building groupies past midnight on the dance floor of Toronto’s biggest nightclub.

Amy Hattan, Fore Solution’s COO, shown here standing in front of the Toronto Convention Center, looks forward to Greenbuild 2012 in San Francisco.

Check out two of Fore Solutions’ featured projects: Hannaford grocery store and Pearl Place multi-family mid-rise.  

This LEED project directory is currently a work-in-progess and your feedback is a valued asset, so please consider clicking the link found at the bottom of each project profile page and filling out the survey to provide your feedback.  

Project teams are now able to share their own project stories to be included in USGBC’s online project directory.