The attached article from the U.S Green Building Council provides the experience and data to convincingly show owners that the odds of building a high-performance building go up dramatically when using an early stage energy & performance model.
“Energy modeling in the pre-design phase can allow a project to achieve 45 percent average savings per project compared to baseline building.”
USGBC says the key to achieving a high performing building is to model EARLY.
Most people don’t know that it typically doesn't cost any more in first costs to do modeling early in design. Usually, there are costs associated with basic energy modeling embedded in standard contracts. According to USGBC, it’s more effective to shift the work and costs of modeling much earlier in the project. Doing this allows project teams to make more holistic choices and work together to tackle complex, integrated issues. AUROS360 uses modeling to inform its proprietary Owner’s Decision Matrix. The Owner’s Decision Matrix balances aspirational building performance goals with first costs and long term operating costs. At any point on a project, the entire project team is aligned and committed to those three metrics.
Other benefits to the AUROS360 approach: 1) the early, conceptual model is open sourced for all team members to use and 2) we operationalize the model through construction and 3) the operationalized model then becomes a building asset that remains with the building to be utilized over its lifetime.
Modeling, in the right hands, guides the way to high performing buildings. AUROS360 uses early performance modeling techniques as one component of Evidence-based Performance. Post modeling, we take the building goals and dynamically embed them into an integrated dashboard to track actual performance during operations.
Our goal is NOT to enable owners to construct high performing buildings; our goal is to enable owners to operate high performing buildings.
For more information, contact Beth Eckenrode, AUROS Group, 412-506-6777.