Green building tool provides insight on smarter practices

The US Green Building Council (USGBC) and construction and development company Skanska have launched a tool that allows builders and designers to adopt smarter and sustainable strategies.

Named Insight, the tool is aggregated with LEED green building project data (LEED is a widely used green building rating system) and analyses the design attributes of LEED-certified buildings within a specified geographic region. It aims to provide comprehensive and actionable information on energy, water and waste savings.

Informed design decisions

The object of Insight is to help building teams make more informed design decisions around sustainability and track their performance and progress in this area. It allows teams that are pursuing LEED certification, as well as projects that are already certified, to support developers, designers and engineers committed to high-level sustainable performance.

Additionally, the tool enables city leaders to track progress towards environmental, social and governance goals while ensuring a particular development is meeting regulations.

“As developers around the globe continue to prioritise sustainable development, Insight provides a revolutionary solution to inform the best design and implementation practices that will allow buildings to achieve maximum, environmentally friendly performance,” said Beth Heider, Skanska USA chief sustainability officer.

“As developers around the globe continue to prioritise sustainable development, Insight provides a revolutionary solution to inform best design and implementation practices."

“Through Insight, Skanska continues to deliver a holistic toolkit for developers, designers and policy-makers to better understand and engage with climate change through minimising a building’s carbon output.”

Insight was developed by experts from both USGBC and Skanska, which is a USGBC member company.

Skanska is currently pioneering some of the most sustainable projects in the world, including the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, a project on the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Atlanta campus that is pursuing Living Building Challenge certification. The latter is the world’s most rigorous proven performance standard for buildings.

The building includes a salvaged item for every 500 square metres of building and is projected to generate at least 105 per cent of the energy that it uses.

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