The show was nicely designed to fit within the space it was held, a large empty retail space in Pittsburgh’s new East End complex, Bakery Square. For displaying their work, students built their own platforms and tables out of corrugated cardboard and used thin wire lines to hang posters, amounting to a superbly minimalist industrial décor. I appreciated that these details were addressed almost as much as I appreciated the variety of work—industrial design projects like wood furniture, independent study projects like a screen-printed fashion line or building a custom wood-encased portable turntable, video work, games, and more. But the thing that I felt inclined to investigate was a course called Speak Lab, in which all the students somehow communicated messages related to environmental issues.

Because of evolveEA’s commitment to sustainability and our focus on design, I decided sit down with a couple of instructors for some background on the course and invite a few students to present their projects to evolveEA staff one day during lunch. Speak Lab was one of three intensive rotations that design seniors took last semester as part of the program’s new lab format. The focus for this lab was on storytelling, while in Play Lab students explored through quick prototyping and in Wonder Lab they developed research methods.

Peter Scupelli and Stacie Rohrbach, the instructors for Speak Lab, explained how they came up with the environmental topics that became the subject matter for all of the Speak Lab students’ projects: “we collected imagery of unbelievable phenomena, like exploding melons, or water catching on fire—of nature gone awry,” said Stacie. She explained that from this starting point they had a collection of imagery and footage that needed to be explained through storytelling. For example, the burning water was a clip taken from the documentary Gasland, which teaches viewers about hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). Peter and Stacie shared examples like these with the students and challenged them to tell their own stories about nine environmental-themed topics from which they could choose.

Students Nick Abele, Zari Salimnejad, and Erica Stine joined us at our office so we could take a closer look at their Speak Lab projects. Nick collected data on pollutants from the EPA and envisions a database of Pittsburgh neighborhoods and their air quality. Zari teaches viewers about the effects of the global dairy and meat industry’s overpopulation of cows on the planet’s atmosphere through a museum exhibition. And Erica deals with the problem of E-Waste through an attractive booklet that presents facts and data in a powerful, layered, image-driven format.

First let us acknowledge that we aren’t the only ones discussing the emerging role of standards in the green and clean-tech sectors. In fact, the folks at SustainAbility have created an excellent report which clearly describing the strengths and weaknesses of current certification and rating systems in their report titled: Signed, Sealed…Delivered? Behind Certifications and Beyond Labels. The authors present valuable insight and analysis regarding the respective role of standards, certifications and labels, and offer their opinions on the future role these systems will continue to play in our future economy. The role of standards designed to document environmental performance will continue to serve a differentiator for building owners, business organizations, and their processes and products. At evolveEA we not only help our clients implement sustainability best practices across the vectors of People, Process and Place, but help clients determine which third party certification standard(s) best ensure continued progress toward sustainability goals and expanded market recognition. As such, the following sustainability standards are widely recognized as leaders in the field of Organizational Culture and People:

B Corp: Becoming a Benefit Corporation requires organizations to fundamentally restructuring bylaws so that leadership can pursue the complimentary goals associated with growth and social benefit. The structure “allows directors of benefit corporations to consider employees, community, and the environment in addition to shareholder value when making operating decisions.” The B-Corp label has grown quickly with over 450 member organizations and legislation across a number of states supporting the B Corp legal designation.

Global Reporting Initiative: ​GRI has pioneered and developed a comprehensive Sustainability Reporting Framework that is widely used around the world. The Framework enables all organizations to measure and report their economic, environmental, social and governance performance—the four key areas of sustainability.

The Reporting Framework—which includes the Reporting Guidelines, Sector Guidelines and other resources—enables greater organizational transparency about economic, environmental, social and governance performance. This transparency and accountability builds stakeholders’ trust in organizations, and can lead to many other benefits. Thousands of organizations, of all sizes and sectors, use GRI’s Framework in order to understand and communicate their sustainability performance.

Carbon Disclosure Project: The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) works to transform the way the world does business to prevent dangerous climate change and protect our natural resources. They see a world where capital is efficiently allocated to create long-term prosperity rather than short-term gain at the expense of our environment. The CDP has successfully leveraged and incentivized the world’s largest companies to voluntarily report emissions and other environmental data resulting in a cohort of organizations that focus on decisions that are able to mitigate risk and make investment decisions that drive sustainable actions. Currently the CDP works with over 71 institutional investors with over 71 trillion under management and 50 fortune 500 organizations on supply chain issues.

The concept of benchmarking, a term commonly used in the design, construction and building operations industry, involves comparing building performance against industry standards and best practices. Commonly used benchmarking metrics such as square feet of office available, parking spaces available per employee, space ratings (Class A), and cost per square foot are often used to evaluate real estate.

And while all of the aforementioned aspects are certainly important when evaluating a building, to examine only those is to miss a crucial part of a building’s associated operating costs and potential valuation—important considerations for tenants and owners alike. What about a building’s ability to produce fresh air and a high quality indoor environment? How much does a building’s energy cost relative to others available? What is the relative efficiency of mechanical systems? Too often, we forget to evaluate our buildings across these crucial criteria; and as a result tenants, owners, students and even taxpayers pay higher costs for maintenance, operations and reduced productivity.  For Better Buildings, We Need Better Data

The truth is; our understanding of a building’s operational and life cycle costs are rarely considered. This lack of information leads to an inability to manage a building as an asset worthy of investment. To fully understand any commercial scale property owners and operators must use less common, but crucial, metrics such as energy, water or air quality performance while simultaneously comparing the performance of such metrics to other comparable facilities. Those efforts in tandem can provide a plan for the future and allow for actionable improvements. A building or portfolio owner/operator that doesn’t actively monitor energy use can be fairly compared to a car company that’s builds vehicles without ever measuring miles per gallon. Existing Buildings a Promising Investment, Global Firms Say

Event Venue Benchmarking can now be ordered online

evolveEA’s recent study of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center (DLCC), measured the building’s performance across crucial metrics such as energy and water usage, waste management, sustainable purchasing, sustainability communication and marketing  and benchmarked the DLCC against the entire convention center industry.

As a result the evolveEA team was able to deliver an actionable report to the DLCC allowing for immediate investment and facility upgrades (leading to significant energy cost savings) and strategic understanding of relative performance in comparison against peers across the country in a range of important performance characteristics.

Doing so has enabled the DLCC to reduce operating costs and shrink its environmental impact, all the while significantly increasing the number of events hosted and spending generated. evolveEA specializes in building performance measurement and benchmarking. We can help you choose key performance metrics that align with organizational goals and illustrate areas for improvement and performance against potential peers and competitors.

Where to begin? Understanding key metrics
Go ahead and answer the questions that follow; if you can answer yes to any of them then you’re already on your way:

• Do you actively monitor energy usage in your building or portfolio?
• If yes, do you measure using a per square foot or per occupant metric?
• How often or at what level of detail do measure energy?
• Have you ever compared your building’s energy use to others that may be similar (or others within your portfolio)?

If not, now might be a good time to take a closer look. For typical building types, the EPA Portfolio Manager is free and easy to use tool. For less traditional building types, a benchmarking analysis might be the appropriate path. In either case the role of benchmarking cannot be undervalued, and over time will improve your building’s bottom line.