By Steve Rizer
There were some interesting developments coming out of the Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG) Board and Committee meeting that took place during the National Institute of Building Sciences’ inaugural Building Innovation Conference earlier this month in Washington, D.C. In an interview with ConstructionPro Week (CPW), WBDG Director Richard Paradis reported that the meeting participants “recommended we actively market WBDG to the higher-education sector.” He noted that several universities use the WBDG in their curricula. The panel also has some interesting plans for what it will do at its next meeting, which is scheduled to take place in March.
The board and committee will address the inclusion of acoustics within all aspects of WBDG, discuss the new “Smart, Whole-Building Controls” section, and be briefed on new Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) continuing education courses that will be added to the existing suite of WBDG and FEMP courses. The board and committee also will review new Building Science Resource Pages and continuing education courses, according to Paradis.
“The industry will benefit from the added content to the website and from the integration of acoustical design principles into the fabric of the website,” Paradis said. “Specifications and other documents needed by the A/E community to design federal and [U.S. Department of] Defense projects are updated regularly so that the industry always has the most recent versions of these important documents.”
WBDG is considered the leading online resource for information related to building planning, design, construction, commissioning, and operation and maintenance. WBDG gets an average of 500,000 unique visitors each month and exceeds five million downloads during that span. WBDG is visited by people from more than 40 countries.
Also included in Part II of ConstructionPro Week's Building Innovation 2013 coverage (ConstructionPro Network member access):
- More Comments from Whole Building Design Guide Director Richard Paradis
- 'Slow Progress' Reported in AIA's 2030 Commitment Program
- Other Nuggets of Information from the Conference Involving the Building Research Information Knowledgebase, USACE's Seattle District Headquarters, emerging window technologies, and the ESPC Deep Retrofit Challenge
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