The New Year is upon us and it is time to make New Year resolutions. I am here to give some advice on how to make it easier for a company to become more Eco-design friendly for it's staff and management team. Speaking to people n the industry I get a lot of negative comments about how it is hard to sell Eco / Sustainable design. I get that "Sustainable design has been around for ever and it is not a new concept but our clients don't want to pay for it or we can't sell it to them" or more comments that follow the same chain of thought. One of the main concepts I say is and like to follow is that "Eco design should be second nature to our design concept and intent." How as a company can you bring down the costs of Sustainable design for your clients, so you are able to sell it, make it easier for your staff to design and stream line production? I have always said that it has to start from internal restructuring; you can try to sell Sustainable / Eco design but if you don't have the right tools and educated staff internally it will be very difficult and expensive on your companies part to do so. Having the right company philosophy, standards, materials library, etc. would simplify the process for your staff and stream line it. If the design process and production is done in less time, it can be sold at a lower price to make the company more competitive. The market is also being saturated with green products and materials. Having a proper materials library with these product manufacturers and building a relationship with them will make yours able to work with these companies for better pricing on bid situations.
To also help companies become and prove their Sustainability practices and design quality as of 2010 there is a 3rd party certification process. The Green Firm Certification will help companies that are starting out to established ones with a roadmap of how to become truly Sustainable on all parts of the internal structure of the firm. This certification is recognized and is supported by many large companies such as ABC,
AGC, AIA, USGBC and many more. It has also received generous support from the Kresge Foundation to develop the on line certification process. For more information check out the following link:
http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=258618886&gid=88593&type=member&item=35207567&articleURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusboston.org%2Fblog%2F2010%2F11%2Fgreen-firm-certification-goes-national-greenbuild&urlhash=Qptv&goback=.gde_88593_member_35207567
or just watch the following Video:
Happy New Year Everyone and try to Think Green and find new ways to improve the process.
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