LEED v4, how has it changed and what is new in Materials. The new "Building Product
Disclosure and Optimization — Environmental Product Declarations" and "Building Product
Disclosure and Optimization — Material Ingredient Reporting" credits will affect the
information you now need to obtain as well as understand. This course will review EPDs, LCAs,
and HPDs.
This course review what is published in EPDs and how they are the score card of a Life
Cycle Assessment of a product, system or service based on Product Category Rules (PCR) for
that product family. This course reviews environmental impacts as outlined in ISO, discusses
limitations using examples of LCA and how simple number comparisons can be misleading.
Discussion covers additional attributes like durability, adaptability, and performance; after all the
Greenest building is the one that does not have to be re-built. Proper specification and detailing
of systems will improve the overall performance of your design solutions. Durability of a
material can affect the building's performance more than any other material attribute, for
example we would not use an un-coated steel exterior panel in a high-salt environment.
Durability is one of the biggest impacts on a product's Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) but how is
it determined?
In addition, this course discusses the latest requests of products’ raw materials and
ingredient disclosures. Health Product Declarations (HPD) guidelines are still being created and
will evolve over time just as LEED has continued to improve and modify over time. This is just
the first step in understanding the trade-off in material selection, human health impacts, exposure
sceneries, and effect on occupants’ health and productivity.
Product decisions are made everyday based on all kinds of attributes and trade-off.
Understanding the (LCA and HPD) of the product you choose for you product will broaden your
knowledge allowing you to make intelligent decision selections for your next project.
Learning Objectives:
- Review LEED v4 and how Material requests are changing
- Review EPDs and LCA
- Review examples of various LCA impacts like Embodied Energy and discuss them as
metrics for choosing materials.
- Review why some materials should be recycled but others materials may use other
options to achieve land fill avoidance based on their Embodied Energy
- Discuss the newest form of transparency HPDs and how they may evolve.
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