Firmwide materials standards

Margaret Montgomery

Principal

NBBJ Architects

LEEDuser Premium Member

34 thumbs up

September 16, 2019

Hi all,

I see that this was a hot topic for the Winter Retreat this past year, but I am wondering how your firms manage standard materials across your practice. two aspects - standard specification items, and also designer choice materials.

1. Do you have a spec baseline with high performance materials that you start with for all projects? Or? If so, how is that stored or managed?

2. We've talked about library standards for years, but libraries aren't as physical as they used to be. How do your designers start with material selections? Do you have a suite of preferred products? Do you use an online sourcing start point? Do you have a standard process for filtering through options?

3. What tools and/or databases have you found to be most useful to get to the right materials quickly?

4. Do you have a "go to" intranet resource for materials that gets to this? Any sort of online selection process?

Lots of questions. Any answers (or silver bullets) would be welcome.

Thanks.

Margaret

Post a reply

Michelle Amt

Director of Sustainability

VMDO

LEEDuser Premium Member

0 thumbs up

Mon, 09/16/2019 - 17:29

Hi Margaret, Sorry, no silver bullets here as far as I am aware. 1. Yes, we are piloting this in a more formal way. We are using a shared spreadsheet (via Smartsheet) that catalogs both our good and not so good materials (and their sustainability attributes) to try and reduce duplicate research/integrate better products. I manage it in collaboration with our interiors person. 2. We have a small physical library that is pre-screened for HPDs, EPDs, CDPH (and we set that out for folks who come in for lunch and learns). This is the list I send people to for looking for good products (all of them have pros/cons and I often check one against the other): * Mindful Materials and GIGA (requires free login) * Transparency Catalog * Ecoscorecard * Building Green * Declare Products Database * UL SPOT for EPDs * HPD Public Repository * Cradle to Cradle Certified Products Registry and Material Health Certificate Registry * Pharos requires login * High Performance Schools Database * Designer Pages * For info on product classes, not specific products: Quartz and Perkins & Will Transparency List We give preference based on CDPH, transparency/disclosure, ingredients, and EPDs (and extra word score for those that have multiple). I wouldn’t say that we’ve perfected this on every project, but we’re trying and getting improved results. 3&4) See above. The AIA Materials Handbook and the USGBC’s Better Building Materials Guide are great resources…of course, we also hire Building Green and Anne Hicks Harney when we can to help us get better. Happy to hop on a call if you’d like to chat, Michelle From: Marga