Autocase

I have! Emma Stewart who used to lead a lot of the research over at Autodesk is a big part of the Autocase team. We always talk about the challenge of collecting and quantifying the ‘squishy’ metrics, and I think Autocase is trying to do that – put a value on things like public health, community, ecosystem services, equity. It’s the stuff LEED doesn’t measure (like energy and water efficiency) but that may be helpful in presenting a more holistic view of a project. I see it as a potential took for our clients in getting zoning, design and community approvals. We don’t have a paid license but we’ve been trying it out. I would recommend getting them to walk through it with you via webex. Thank you, Anica ANICA LANDRENEAU Associate AIA, LEED® AP BD+C, WELL AP, BREEAM Senior Principal | Director of Sustainable Design HOK anica.landreneau@hok.com t +1 202 944 1490 m +1 202 250 1779 Canal House, 3223 Grace Street, N.W. | Washington, DC 20007 US hok.com | connect From: Allen Sc

This grew from a group of economists at HDR many years ago who developed a way to measure the social impacts of the performance measures we often viewed as simple paybacks. It was called SROI (Sustainable Return on Investment). We used it very effectively on government and infrastructure jobs demonstrating the community costs of the impact that the projects had on access to water, energy, transportation, carbon, etc. The issue was that this was a really expensive service and only large projects could justify it. since that, the group left and started a small company (Impact Infrastructure) that has eventually developed Autocase – an analysis tool that does much of what they did, but with algorithms. The data they use for the assessments are all from industry accepted sources. That said, the value comes as an additional measure to view these larger impacts to make better choices beyond the border of your projects, and that the software allows you to do this in very, very little time. While I anticipate the license costs to go up over time, it is relatively inexpensive especially against many of the other analytical software that we use for other metrics. They are still growing so they may be willing to allow a beta on a project to prove out value. We are currently using it on 3 projects and have seen select positive impacts on how we approach some issues and in spite of the “squishiness” of these social costs, our clients have so far accepted them as valid measures. One other benefit is that Autocase has worked out with the USGBC that this assessment can earn up to 3 ID points depending on the number of areas you analyze. This alone could be worth the cost of the software. It even spits data to show the relative cost of the various LEED credits pursed. We are interested in seeing how this works on non-LEED projects as well given that a typical analysis might take an hour or less (yes, it is that intuitive) and they just released a beta version of 2.1 that will better enable this without trying to tie it to the cost of LEED credits. Take a look definitely. In some ways, it may seem too good to be true, but in reality, it is showing value above its cost. Robert Phinney, AIA, LEED Fellow, ENV SP, Fitwel Ambassador Page From:

Autocase is an interesting tool with a lot of potential. As Anica said, we’ve tested it a few times. Although I like many things about it, it feels too black boxy for my tastes. It has to make a lot of assumptions about the way the building is occupied and run, which can have an enormous impact on the final results. (That’s the down side of it being so fast and easy – there are limited inputs.) For example, we used it on a project in a downtown area and it showed a huge yield in financial savings from adding bike racks – much larger than intuitively made sense for this particular project. We knew from the client (currently in a building across the street) that there was limited ridership for unrelated reasons; adding bike racks wouldn’t change this. We weren’t able to find the place to adjust this in the program and always felt that the outcomes were skewed. It also raised a red flag overall – this was the item that was the most easily identifiable as fishy. What about all the other things we couldn’t easily identify? It tainted our perception of the overall results. That said, I think there’s enormous potential for this kind of tool, and hope that people continue to test it out. It can definitely spur good conversation with clients, and the pilot credit points are a nice bonus. MARA BAUM AIA, LEED Fellow, WELL AP, WELL Faculty Vice President | Sustainable Design Leader, Health and Wellness HOK 1 Bush St., Suite 200 | San Francisco, CA 94104 USA t +1 415 356 8660 m +1 415 691 9782 mara.baum@hok.com hok.com | connect From: Robert Phin

Reviving this old post to see if anyone has had recent or renewed interest in Autocase. We purchased recently to try out on a project and I found it to be somewhat like energy modeling... not as satisfying if you're not using to drive decision-making and also not as intuitive as I'd hoped it would be. Have a call with them again next week to talk through this specific project, but with the increasing interest in health and wellness in the industry it feels like Autocase and tools like it will be the next frontier, with so much of the data that programs like WELL are gathering now in survey form. 

We did a demo on a project about six months ago; I found the outputs really interesting, but had a hard time translating it into decision making.  Some of that may have to do with our typologies (education)--the productivity gains don't really translate, and some of the "costs" shown aren't typically shared by our clients (e.g., community health cost savings aren't typically factored into the decision whether to build a bigger window or not--the investment won't yield a direct return). I wonder if it makes more sense on a larger district scale. In our application, it felt a bit academic, and also a bit of a black box...but I haven't played with it beyond that one instance. I think your analogy to energy modeling is a good one, and would love to hear if/how it's informed your designs. 

We are in the exploration stage. I am overseeing an architecture intern's exploration of a single building case study in the Portland area for her school research project. Autocase doesn't specifically have a student license, but after discussing the research nature of the project they were more than happy to grant our intern a 12-month free license for one project. I think they see the potential of getting it into higher ed courses. We are also discussing with Autocase the applicability of using it for a Community College client with multiple campuses who is going through a large master planning effort. If it makes sense, we will propose it to the client. I am happy to share updates for both projects as they occur.

I’ve looked at it for a few projects, one in deeper application (but with a version over a year ago, a lot has changed in it since then), and my experience is similar to Michelle’s. I think the most logical application is public and governmental development and planning projects, and/or larger corporate developments with a public commitment to the general social welfare, where the somewhat abstract monetized public benefits could be useful in scenario comparisons and public communications. Chris Flint Chatto AIA, LEED AP BD+C Principal ZGF ARCHITECTS LLP T 503.863.2324 E chris.chatto@zgf.com 1223 SW Washington Street, Suite 200 Portland, OR 97205 Fro

To bolster Chris' position of Autocase working well for public projects, we are using it through a consultant on a City of Houston Community Center. We are still calculating the building's impact (metrics largely align with LEED), however we were able to do a site analysis on the 26 acre site to let the city determine where best to invest their dollars and what would most impact future O&M. By showing long-term benefits of public health, flood mitigation, recreational value, etc in terms of dollars, we've had a more constructive dialog during value engineering where first costs usual have the final say. From some recent retrocommissioning projects, the city has realized how much facility mismanagement is costing them, so they have taken this proactive step. Bigger picture, I will also say that the Autocase effort has brought new members to the design project team that don't traditionally participate, such as owner operations personnel. The process feels much more holistic, that the owner has more vested interest and the building will be cared for after opening because those caring for it had a say in its creation. Additionally, Autocase has been receptive to our inputs and comments so I see it evolving to wider applications. 

We have been using Autocase for over three years and are very pleased with our ability to better communicate full triple bottom line impacts of design and construction decisions. We use Autocase both as an exemplar of what we can do during project pursuit, as well as tracking decision making and related impacts during design. I find it works best with design/build projects, but we use it more widely than that. It is effective in conditioning the client, and thus the market, to consider health impacts, in addition to our normal sustainability conversation. It is also important to note that this analysis qualifies as a Pilot credit under ID for LEED. Our team has successfully pursued and achieved this credit on both BD+D and ID+C projects and under both v3 and v4. Their recent addition of an embodied carbon element is also quite attractive In addition, the Autocase team is very helpful and responsive, both guiding you through the software and taking feedback on how to improve the interface. Thank you,