Manufacturers report the attributes of their products through a comprehensive, online questionnaire. Their entries then are freely available in one place and in a consistent structure to designers, constructors, and building operators searching www.greenformat.com. The GreenFormat database currently includes information on more than 1,600 green products and is continuing to grow.
BSD SpecLink is a specification writing system sold by subscription to architects, engineers, and other design professionals. It is used to produce construction specifications for more than 26,000 projects annually across the United States. SpecLink includes several features that help design professionals write specifications that are more environmentally sound, including automation tools that are geared to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system. The latest release of BSD SpecLink, with links to the GreenFormat website, were made available at www.bsdsoftlink.com last month.
"We do have built into SpecLink quite a number of green features, including checklists that help people who are attempting to get LEED certification," BSD President Robert Paul Dean told GBI. "Going down this checklist helps them select the criteria that they're going to try to meet in order to get credits. It pre-selects the appropriate sections and pre-selects some of the text within those sections. There's a report that's automatically generated that lists LEED submittals that are required by the specifications. And, of course, we have individual manufacturer information in many -- but not all -- of the sections where a particular manufacturer is attempting to promote green features or green products."
Annual subscription rates for SpecLink range from $895 to tens of thousands of dollars, Dean said.
