• Writing sustainable specifications has many steps, including educating design teams.
• Design teams should begin projects by asking what their sustainability requirements are.
• Well-coordinated written documentation can make the difference in whether a project will meet its sustainability requirements.

Specifications are the written requirements that define the attributes of construction materials and processes that will be used for a project. As such, they document important sustainability requirements and characteristics.

Over the last 20 to 25 years, sustainable design has become a critical consideration to owners, building occupants, and communities. When working to sell or lease a building, owners have become aware that occupants and buyers have sustainability top of mind and consider the impact construction and its processes have on the environment.

By including and documenting project sustainability requirements, the design team— including specification writers—can help create a healthier planet one project at a time. The development of specifications will consider sustainability in evaluating which building products and systems to include. There are, however, many steps involved in writing sustainable specifications, including determining the overall sustainability requirements, deciding who will specify what, coordinating submittals, and educating design teams.

How to Determine Sustainability Requirements

Exterior view of Hope Lodge in Dallas. Photo by James Steinkamp

Inside Hope Lodge, Dallas. Photo by Peter Molick

When a team begins a new project, the first question a specifier should ask a team is: “What are the sustainability requirements for this project?” From there, one should determine the project goals of both the design team and owner: Will the project be going for a particular sustainable design certification? Is there a checklist with requirements?

The answers to these initial questions will inform what products and systems will need to be specified to ensure they meet the project’s sustainability requirements. Specifications are part of the “contract documents,” and when sustainable attributes are listed, they should be considered as requirements, not goals. Once products and systems are chosen, a team must figure out how they will work together and determine whether they will meet code and other requirements. These considerations, as well as careful documentation, are critical for the success of a project. In fact, well-coordinated written documentation can make the difference in whether a project will meet its sustainability requirements or not.

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When working on a project, an owner often wants to include sustainable elements but may not want to complete or pay for an official certification program like LEED, WELL Building Standard, or the Living Building Challenge. Instead, we see more requests for projects to be considered “LEED-like” or “LEED-light.” We specify many of the same attributes for certification requirements for these types of projects but without verification and extra submittals.

When working through this coordination process, whether for certification or not, the specification writer must determine what product or system requirements to include. Scorecards used for calculating project certification requirements can be utilized by designers looking to pick and choose effective sustainable design strategies for their projects. Not only can one of these scorecards help with documentation and strategy, but they can also sometimes be used to educate an owner and help change their perspective on having their building or project certified.

Where Do You Put Sustainability Requirements?

Sustainability was taken into consideration from the very beginning of the Hope Lodge Dallas project. Photo by Peter Molick

Every project should have minimum sustainability requirements for products and systems. In addition to the importance placed on these requirements by owners and building occupants, many have become required by code.

The questions are:

How do you develop them?

Where should the requirements go?

And how do they get documented?

Some specification writers put all the sustainability requirements in one place. This would typically entail developing a specification section in Division 01 General Requirements that will govern the requirements for every section.

Putting all sustainability requirements into one general section neatly packages everything in one place. Therefore changes can be easily coordinated. A statement in each individual technical section that references back to this document is a great tool if the information will trickle down and be shared from the contractor to their subcontractors. However, specifications are typically divided out by division or work results and a subcontractor who’s doing one part of the work may only receive or review the section that applies to their particular work result. Others spread the requirements out in the individual technical sections by putting broad requirements in a single general section and expanding upon them further by topic or system in each individual section.

On the other hand, many specification writers develop a Division 01 sustainability section that includes the broad overall administrative and procedural rules for a project. Doing so helps develop specific information in the technical sections with requirements that would relate to a particular product or work result. By providing both a general section and sections with more specific individualized requirements and cross-referencing them, contractors and their subcontractors will be made aware of all requirements necessary to document sustainability.

Because the industry is changing so rapidly, many contractor teams are having trouble keeping up and understanding all of the requirements necessary to construct a sustainable building. Providing a general overall section and then expanding the sustainability requirements in each section ensures the subcontractor who is performing the work has all of the requirements.

Communication, Teaching, and Mentoring

Inside the Perkins&Will Dallas studio. Photo courtesy of Perkins&Will

Every team member—specifiers, sustainability leaders, and designers—needs to communicate and coordinate to advance the sustainability requirements for a project. Sometimes a disconnect exists between the sustainability team members, designers, and specification writers when choosing and specifying sustainable products. This is because specification writers do not necessarily write sections for every discipline. Instead, the specifier working for the architect gathers and packages sections that are typically written by disciplines who are employed by a different firm. Specification writers employed by a firm and consultant specification writers alike normally only write architectural sections. They have little or no control over the structural (where there is currently a lot of concern about carbon and concrete sections) or MEP sections where a big part of sustainability can happen. This problem could be solved with coordination and review of documents to ensure sustainability requirements are documented correctly.

A specification writer can only specify what designers choose. Therefore, the specification writer’s job is to help educate designers on more sustainable options when choosing products to include in a design. They can provide information, help with selection, review, and provide an introduction to manufacturers and product representatives who can provide valuable insight on the sustainability of their particular product or system.

Education plays a significant role in a specifier’s job and comes into play quickly, as some team members may not have written specs before or may not fully understand the process. Taking the necessary time to educate and mentor teams about specifications and the requirements of the evaluation, documentation, and writing process is critical. Sharing information, actively participating in the process, suggesting alternatives, and explaining similarities and differences while being a resource to a project team can go a long way in the education process for not only design team members but specifiers as well.

Overall, specifiers play a vital role in developing and completing sustainable projects. Specifications provide contractors with clear instructions on overall project intent, performance, and construction.

The post Understanding Specification and Sustainability Requirements on Your Next Project appeared first on gb&d magazine.

The benefits of mass timber construction are many. It’s beautiful. It’s sustainable. And it’s more quickly assembled. But there’s one major challenge: Sound control is always an issue when the mass timber is left exposed on the ceiling.

Unwanted noise, as those who’ve endured stomping upstairs neighbors can attest, can adversely affect the happiness and well-being of residents. A Maxxon Acousti-Mat® sound mat topped with a Gyp-Crete® underlayment can help by offering a high-performance sound control system that doesn’t affect aesthetics.

A Maxxon Acousti-Mat sound control system adds an air gap to reduce structure-borne vibrations and mass to block airborne sound transfer through the floor/ceiling assembly. Photo courtesy of Maxxon

Typically a sound control system is only used in residential construction to meet International Building Code. This is because, in commercial concrete construction, no sound control system is required to meet accepted light commercial acoustic levels, usually a STC & IIC 40-45.

Mass timber commercial spaces often feature beautiful wooden ceilings paired with a polished concrete floor. It looks really cool, but it creates an environment where the concrete wants to ring and the timber has insufficient mass to dampen it. Thus, to meet traditional commercial acoustic levels in this environment, sound control systems are a necessary component.

Photo courtesy of Maxxon

The reason sound control in mass timber is such a challenge is because a traditional ceiling adds mass and air space—two critical components in reducing sound transfer. In mass timber the goal is to show off the beautiful wood ceiling, so sound reduction must be achieved on the floor side of the assembly. A Maxxon Acousti-Mat sound control system adds an air gap to reduce structure-borne vibrations and mass to block airborne sound transfer through the floor/ceiling assembly.

Maxxon has conducted more than 300 sound tests in the most common types of mass timber assemblies and has designed a variety of sound control systems to meet commercial and residential noise reduction requirements.

The post How Do You Control Sound in Mass Timber Construction?  appeared first on gb&d magazine.

Steam heating systems have had a reputation for being inefficient and difficult to control space temperature. Likely when you think of steam-heated spaces you think of opening windows to regulate temperature. For more than a century that has been the only real way to control the temperature, but not anymore.

Salus’ wireless technology has made these systems more efficient and comfortable than ever—enabling control. A Wireless Radiator Valve Actuator is installed on the radiator valve—paired with a battery-operated wireless thermostat that senses the room’s temperature and modulates the radiator valve actuator to maintain the desired temperature. This combination eliminates the need to run wires in a finished apartment and is priced at $175 to $200. One thermostat can control up to six wireless actuators.

The controls can be accessed on the thermostat or through the Smart Home application on mobile devices. Data is uploaded to the cloud so building managers can monitor one property or their entire property portfolio. This technology is increasingly crucial to improving the operation of buildings. Replacement of steam-heating systems would be prohibitively expensive. This new technology solves the problem of tenant comfort and “paying to heat the outdoors.”

When developing this tech, Salus considered the relationship between building manager and tenant. The battery-powered thermostats generally last two heating seasons so managers aren’t disturbing tenants to replace batteries. The wireless valve actuator has an optional lithium-ion battery that will last up to eight years. Per the Department of Energy, such system upgrades can reduce energy costs by 20 to 35%, depending on building size and chosen technology. Steam heat is often thought of as what your grandmother had, but when controlled, it’s a good quality heat. Unlike other heating systems, it heats a space quickly, and it is not dry in the winter like forced air.

The post Steam-Heated Building Technology Can Help You Manage Your Building Better appeared first on gb&d magazine.

Anyone who’s ever been in a building with a steam heating system knows it can provide a great quality of heat but be challenging to control the temperature. The steam boiler, usually in a basement, pumps out steam at approximately 212 degrees. Steam travels through the building, sending temperatures in some spaces soaring while others stay low. For more than a century the only solution has been to open a window.

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Steam heating systems were developed in the late 1800s. During the 1918 Spanish Flu opening the window to circulate air helped reduce illness transmission, similar to what we’ve done today. The goal was to have a heat source extreme enough to keep spaces warm even on the coldest days with the windows open. Nowadays, despite being in a pandemic, opening windows with the heat on is seen as wasteful—like throwing your dollars out.

Steam boilers may not be the most efficient way to heat a space, but they’re not going anywhere soon. They’re common in buildings built before 1950. The Greener, Greater Buildings Plan reports most buildings above 50,000 square feet (81.9% in New York City alone) use steam-based heat. The cost to replace them would be astronomical. You’re better off demolishing the building and starting fresh. In recent years there have been a few solutions to help control radiator heat. Covers were invented to guide heat from one space to another. Yet few of these inventions meet today’s technology standards.

That’s why at Salus we’ve developed the technology to control steam heating systems, ultimately taming wild steam. Using thermostatic radiator valves and remote thermostats, our technology increases comfort and maximizes savings. Our wireless technology enables individual thermostat controls to be in each space. Occupants no longer need to worry about one space being 80 degrees and the other 60. It’s helping bring this older technology in line with modern times.

The post How Do Steam Heating Systems Heat Buildings? appeared first on gb&d magazine.

Administrators, teachers, and students alike benefit from our accordion-style portable classroom dividers. You can easily divide a space into multiple rooms or make a mix of temporary walls with our dividers. Partitions form an “L,” “U,” cross, or curve shapes around desks, and you can connect two or more dividers to make complex configurations or long continuous lengths. Choose between vinyl or fabric-covered portable classroom dividers to match your room’s décor and even add a logo.

Easily divide educational spaces and display school projects with Screenflex. Photo courtesy of Screenflex

Listening to our customers’ needs is a big part of what we do. Take, for example, what we learned from our work with schools that happen to be in floodplains. While no floor is 100% level, those floors were the worst. Those experiences pushed us to develop our self-leveling casters and position control hinges to ensure our dividers stood straight even in unusual conditions. Our molded position control hinges help the divider remain in the desired configuration, and our full-length hinges continuously connect each panel to adjacent panels for added stability. As a result we offer the only patented stabilized portable room divider.

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Our solutions won’t scratch up the floor, either. You can easily roll our products into a gymnasium, for example, breaking that large space into many spaces. Lock the dividers in place and rest easy, as the self-leveling casters are hard rubber, non-marking casters. The spring mechanism we invented helps our dividers stay stable on even the most uneven floors.

Screenflex portable dividers are quick and easy to set up in any desired configuration. Courtesy of Screenflex

Educators love our dividers for their honeycomb core, which knocks down sound and gives our dividers a tackable surface to display school projects and artwork. Many also turn to us for space planning. If you’re a principal needing to configure extra rooms in a cafeteria or library for after-school programs, just give us your dimensions and we’ll sketch up a plan. Our products and services make managing facilities easier than ever.

The post How Do Portable Classroom Dividers Make Educators’ Lives Easier? appeared first on gb&d magazine.

When it comes to underlayments, however, the solution depends on the project. Erik Holmgreen, Maxxon’s vice president of research and development, explains how it all works in this column.

Our product line includes several solutions for different types of subfloors and construction. It’s never one size fits all.

The eco-friendly Gyp-Crete® line is perfect for use over wood subfloors and is the industry standard in multifamily construction. Gyp-Crete products are available in several formulas to meet the cost and floor strength requirements of any job.

While often used in wood frame construction, our high strength underlayments are also excellent for smoothing concrete slabs or precast planks in new and renovation projects. Our Gyp-Crete products are typically poured at one inch deep over our Acousti-Mat® line of sound control products.

This system provides excellent sound control as well as fire resistance. Maxxon’s Gyp-Crete and Acousti-Mat system is listed in 140 UL fire rated designs and backed by hundreds of published sound tests.

These solutions are the core of what Maxxon has done for decades, and we always continue to improve their performance and cost.

Photo courtesy of Maxxon

Beyond our Gyp-Crete line we are particularly excited about our high-strength self-levelers. These commercially targeted products, like Level EZ, have very high flow, high strength, and can be installed quite thin with little floor preparation.

Rather than the one inch of gypsum underlayment in the multifamily space, we can install these products down to a quarter-inch or less to smooth out rough subfloors and create a level surface for floor coverings. These thin pours and very level surfaces can be ready for floor coverings in very little time.

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These features are also useful in multifamily renovations, where old rough floors need repair and leveling with short turn around. The Maxxon® EZ Renovation System uses these levelers in conjunction with repair products such as Gyp-Fix EZ® patch and Maxxon Fortify, a strengthening primer specifically developed for multifamily renovations.

And you can rest assured every product comes with Maxxon’s quality guarantee. With our constant innovation building on a half-century of success, some things never change.

The post Which Underlayment Should I Use? appeared first on gb&d magazine.

• Flame retardant fabrics by GALE Pacific include a flame retardant additive that runs throughout the fiber, not just on the surface.
• These shade fabrics are expected to last for 10 years outdoors.
• GALE Pacific’s fabric materials create strength and dimensional stability.

Unlike other companies that achieve flame retardant properties by donning a surface treatment, our flame retardant additive runs all the way through the fiber. I’ll use the analogy of carrot versus onion. If you cut a carrot, it’s orange inside. If you cut an onion, it’s white. With the onion approach, the additive is only around the surface of a fiber. We know surface additives will disappear over time or be diminished by rain or UV exposure. We take the carrot approach. When we produce fiber, the flame retardant additive spins through an extrusion die head and goes all the way through the fiber, effectively locking in the additive.

Our shade fabrics are expected to last for at least 10 years outdoors. The flame retardant properties, UV stabilizers, and other additives we use to maintain the performance and vibrant colors allow us to achieve that. We’re selective about the pigments we incorporate, as they impact colorfastness, and our fabric colors maintain good color stability over time.

Photo courtesy of Shade Industries

Australia is the only country that mandates minimum requirements for shade fabric performance. We adapt our products to be compliant to that standard, and we use that as our basis for performance characteristics globally. The current standard calls for a minimum of 80% UV block for human protection application; we design the majority of our range to have a 90+% UV block.

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Shade fabrics must have inherent strength and dimensional stability. You’re talking about some structures with large spans that have to be able to withstand wind and rain loads so the material doesn’t fail. Part of our DNA is in the raw materials we use and the way we construct fabric. Being able to have the strength and dimensional stability needed along with flame retardant performance will become increasingly important, and knowing how to evaluate fabrics appropriately will be important to the architects and designers specifying them.

The post How Do Flame Retardant Fabrics Work? appeared first on gb&d magazine.

• Screenflex has been offering innovative portable room dividers to help businesses and organizations make the most of their spaces since 1989.
• The popular standard room divider is a lightweight accordion-style room divider designed with a strong steel frame, sound-absorbing core, and self-leveling casters for ease of mobility.
• Roll your portable partition into position, lock the self-leveling end casters, and enjoy your newly created private space.
• These solutions can be used as freestanding room partitions, temporary walls, sound barriers, portable art displays, and more.

With Screenflex portable room dividers, you can reconfigure any space in minutes.

In the workplace, our solutions help teams quickly and efficiently make training rooms, set up private interview spaces, or even prepare for blood drives. We’ve seen all of these scenarios and more.

Easily transform any office space with Screenflex’s colorful portable room dividers. Courtesy of Screenflex

This flexibility in design is more important now than ever, as many workplaces seek solutions for social distancing, too.

Our solutions are easy to operate and store with a compact storage feature. They are built to last, with unmatched stability thanks to self-leveling casters, locking corner casters, and full-length hinges connecting each panel to the adjacent panels. Our durable steel end frame adds to their sturdiness.

When you need to transform a big space into many smaller spaces or simply close off a wide open area, you can easily roll in and lock in place our lightweight dividers.

Screenflex offers clear room dividers for transparency, too. Courtesy of Screenflex

Aesthetically speaking, the options are endless. Choose from 38 colors and multiple heights and lengths, add windows, or go with clear. You can even add a logo. You can also convert any Screenflex panel into a dry erase panel with bright white material that can be written on and wiped clean again and again.

In many offices, just like schools, teams use our portable room dividers not only to maximize their space, but also to tack up important work and collaborate using dividers that combine writable surfaces with tackable fabric panels. Two layers of sound-absorbing fiberglass insulation cover the core on both sides for added sound absorption.

Courtesy of Screenflex

For offices looking for a more permanently located divider, our WALLmount is a great solution. If you’re certain it’s time to split up the space, the WALLmount divider attaches to a wall at one end and opens into the room in any direction with ease. The panels fold flat against the wall when stored.

The post How Do Portable Room Dividers Improve Offices? appeared first on gb&d magazine.

• Ken Hallam from Binswanger Glass explains some of the most exciting developments in the glass industry to improve safety and performance.
• From resisting hurricane-strength winds to blocking gunfire, glass has a major role to play in improving building safety.
• Techniques such as tempered glass can strengthen the material, increasing its resistance against extreme weather, accidents, and more.

In the glass industry so many safety features are built in. You don’t see them, but they’re there. One great example of this occurs in spandrel glass, or the glass on the outside of a building that covers the space between floors. This horizontal band of glass conceals the floor edge slab, HVAC ducts, wiring, insulation, and more. The challenge is that this area isn’t air conditioned or heated like the spaces above and below it. It’s a tough environment, in other words, and that puts strain on the glass, which may lead to the glass fracturing or even falling off a building—a major problem.

To prevent this glass is tempered, or heat-strengthened. This process strengthens the glass to improve its resistance to extreme heat or cold. If the glass does break, it breaks into small pieces rather than large, dangerous shards. It’s the same process used in auto glass to mitigate risks in accidents.

Binswanger Glass installed the high-performance curtain wall system featuring Guardian SunGuard SNR 43 in the Allscripts Office Tower in Raleigh, North Carolina. Photo courtesy of Binswanger Glass

Manufacturers have also developed techniques to strengthen glass for other uses. After Hurricane Andrew caused billions of dollars in damage in 1992, building codes changed drastically. Back then, high winds shattered windows and water rushed in, causing extensive damage to homes and buildings. Authorities began to require laminated glass in these areas to prevent such outcomes. Laminated glass features a plastic or vinyl inner layer that holds the glass in place in case of breakage.

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Furthermore, using silicone or different types of gaskets seals the gap between the window and the frame, helping hold the broken glass in place. These techniques are also used to create bullet-resistant glass, which contains a polyvinyl inner layer surrounded by multiple layers of glass. All of these innovations lead to higher quality, longer lasting, safer glass in our spaces.

The post What Glass Solutions Improve Safety? appeared first on gb&d magazine.

• Electronic locking solutions by Digilock have changed personal security, from health care to retail.
• Key codes, RFID tags, or Mobile IDs allows easy access for staff in health care.
• In retail, smart lockers placed at the back of the store create additional buying opportunities for shoppers picking up their items.

From health care to retail, electronic locking solutions have transformed how personal security is ensured.

Take health care, where carts with sensitive materials like medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, and digital tablets storing personal information zip up and down hospital corridors. With keyless electronic locks, items can be secured while digital credentials like a key code, RFID tag, or Mobile ID can be given to staff for quick access when needed.

With an integrated access control system, specific personnel can be given access to one area and excluded from another. In the past each department may have been managed separately, but digital locks employ a single footprint, reducing complexity and saving everyone time.

Photo courtesy of Digilock

In retail the potential for efficiencies and even new revenue streams abound. The last thing managers want is for their cashier to have a purse or bag beside them at the register. For that reason they’ve long provided storage lockers to use during shifts. But with old-fashioned mechanical locks, each worker would be assigned their own locker with a dial combination or key. With three shifts of 30 employees each, 90 lockers would be required. If turnover occurs, managers might be shut out.

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With a digital solution, these issues are a thing of the past. By using shared access credentials, employees working different shifts can use the same locker, saving floor space. In addition, through products like Digilock’s PackageHold, free shipping can be offered on e-commerce purchases if customers agree to in-store pickup at a Smart Locker they’ve been granted access to. If lockers are strategically placed in the back of a store, shoppers are liable to make additional purchases as they traverse a location. Retail can also elevate curbside delivery programs with an automated pickup program for customers.

While health care and retail offer particularly strong examples, there is no industry that has gone untouched by the electronic lock revolution.

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