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FROM THE EDITOR
During an interview for an article many years ago, I asked a sustainability consultant a question about an “environmentally friendly” building. He immediately corrected my phrasing: “Greg, never say ‘environmentally friendly’ when referring to buildings or building products.” He explained his rebuff thusly: No building or product is friendly to the environment. Some may be less harmful or more responsible than others, but saying “environmentally friendly” is wholly inaccurate.
That may sound nit-picky, but for a nit-picky magazine editor who strongly believes in the precision of words, it’s a lesson I took to heart. And I think it’s a lesson exacting facility managers can appreciate as well. You wouldn’t say “kilowatts” when you mean “kilowatt hours,” would you? Nor would you go into a presentation and explain to your CFO that your building is doing “pretty well.” You’d go in with hard data, trends, benchmarking, and analysis.
This idea of the precision of meaning is especially relevant as we launch our new High-Performance Buildings conference and expo — June 2-3 in Fort Worth. “High-performance” has become the term de jour for many in the industry to mean everything from “green” and “sustainable” to “energy efficient” and “smart.” Truly, it means all those things together, but each one individually isn’t quite enough.
But one of the goals of this newsletter, as well as the new conference and expo, has been (and will be) to define more clearly what a high-performance building is. We think it’s one that’s energy and resource efficient, intelligent, sustainable, and people-friendly. And this definition is important because it gives facility managers a multi-faceted goal to strive to. Besides, these days, calling anything simply “environmentally friendly” is nebulous to the point of being meaningless.
As always, I’m interested to hear from you. Would you agree with our definition of “high-performance”? What would you add (or subtract)?
Cheers,
Greg Zimmerman, editor
One more thing: A session at our upcoming NFMT show in Baltimore next week will also try to tackle the question of what a high-performance building is. For the purposes of this session, one answer is that a high-performance building is one that that performs in operations as well or better from an energy and occupant satisfaction standpoint as it was expected to in design. We hope to see you there – Wednesday, March 11 at 3:10 pm at the Baltimore Convention Center.
HIGH-PERFORMANCE STRATEGIES
High-Performance, Guaranteed
A GSA building near Seattle has used a creative new design-build contract method to ensure high-performance in operations.
IN THE NEWS
Building Operating Management Launches High-Performance Buildings Conference and Expo
The free conference — an extension of Building Operating Management’s National Facility Management and Technology (NFMT) show will take place June 2-3 at the Fort Worth Convention Center.
HIGH-PERFORMANCE MULTIMEDIA
FMXcellence Winner Videos
These videos showcase the winners of the 2014 Building Operating Management FMXcellence award.
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