The U.S. Green Building Council casts a long, albeit green, shadow over the A/E/C community, steadily gaining influence as a major market driver in one of the oldest and most established industries—design and construction. Certainly, our buildings, whether LEED certified or not, are better performing for its efforts. Now with the long anticipated introduction of LEED v4, USGBC has raised the standards again, acknowledging the success previous iterations had in creating higher baseline expectations for design and construction teams. New prerequisites have been established and new credits added, for everything from high-tech advanced energy metering and demand/response infrastructure to more low-tech efforts like providing for storage and collection of recyclables as early as core and shell construction and encouraging joint use of facilities, such as schools.
Last month, I discussed how the Gypsum Association’s new life-cycle assessment tools, specifically our Life-Cycle Assessment, Gypsum Wallboard and third-party certified (Type III) environmental product declaration for 5/8-inch Type X gypsum wallboard can contribute to projects aiming to earn the revised Building Life-cycle Impact Reduction credit and the new Building Product Disclosure and Optimization—EPD credits. But as I scanned the new credits, I discovered that USGBC is increasingly acknowledging the important role sound attenuation can play in enhancing quality of life. That made me think of one of the Association’s oldest and most established publications—the Fire Resistance Design Manual, first published in 1961.