Building design and construction is complex, time consuming, and expensive. Buildings require a huge amount of materials and resources to create, and gobs of energy to operate. Complexity, time, and expense have steadily increased over the decades.
I may not be David Letterman but I have a Top 10 list of my own. Top Ten you ask? After 13 years of site inspections for building owners, architects and contractors, I kept seeing the same mistakes again and again.
In spite of being battered and nearly stamped out by the anemic economy, the green building movement has not only hung around, but spawned some exciting, promising developments.
In North America, EIFS is
pretty much a single type of design, namely expanded polystyrene insulation
adhesively attached to the supporting wall, and a thin, synthetic, two-layer,
glass fiber mesh-reinforced coating system.
It’s always interesting to write a column two months in advance of when it actually hits the street. As this column is being composed, it’s about 25 degrees Fahrenheit outside in the Washington D.C. suburbs, and the snow that fell six days ago is a frozen mass. Not much liquid moisture outside for the past two weeks. It’s been cold.
Sometimes it is difficult to avoid a quick knee jerk reaction. Everyone has the tendency to make that gut reaction without thinking things through or act out to please some immediate emotional response from a support group.
The recent devastating
earthquake in Haiti has focused attention on many things about that country,
including politics, economics, its history and culture, and many other poignant
topics, not the least of which is the safety and design of buildings there.
The California Building Standards Commission has been working on a green building code since 2007, culminating with a primarily voluntary set of standards for nonresidential occupancies adopted in July of 2008.
Networking has become a buzzword to describe making business contacts in a social setting. I tend to use the term “schmoozing.” Call it what you will, it’s one of the most cost-effective ways of drumming up business-no small consideration in these hard times.
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