Day of Service – Boston Green Academy

By Grey Lee


All seventy-five 6th grade students participated in the Green Apple Day of Service, which focused on composting.  The project was made possible by MassSave, who are eager to support sustainablity education in today's youth. The funding was part of the Green Apple Mini Grant program of the USGBC MA Chapter, based in Boston. 

The middle school has been piloting composting in the lunch room for the last month, and this day of service was created to: 1) educate the students on why we compost, 2) educate the rest of the school about the awesome middle school composting pilot, and 3) reward the 6th grade for their efforts.  

The day started off with students broken into their learning cohorts.  They discussed the meaning of Community Service and then reflected on what the Green Apple Day of Service meant.  The students then rotated through 3 different activities:


1. Compost Education & Worm Bins: Students participated in several hands-on, interactive activities that taught them the importance ofcompost (including saving energy!) and then helped reinforce what we can and can’t compost at Boston Green Academy.  These activities included a game where students looked at a pie chart detailing total waste from 2014 and discussed ways to reduce it.  Students honed in on the fact that 15% was food waste, and were thrilled to learn that we were helping to change that statistic at Boston Green Academy by composting! The activity ended with students observing Red Wigglers and making 2 worm bins, 1 for their class and 1 for a 7th grade class.

2. Art Activity: This activity created signs that will educate the rest of the student body about our Compost Pilot in the middle school.  The final product spelled out BGA COMPOSTS in large letters.  The top of each letter was a collage of things we CAN compost at BGA (like beans, bread and napkins) and the bottom was a collage of things we CAN’T compost yet at BGA (like meat and cheese).  We made three of these signs to spread around the school.  It was a great way to reinforce composting and get the students excited about sharing what they are learning and doing everyday in lunch with the rest of the student body.


3. Cooking: This activity helped the students learn how to cook nutritious food all while creating a healthy celebration meal to culminate the Green Apple Day of Service.  One group made kale salad, another group hummus dip and the final group green salsa made with green tomatoes and peppers from our garden.  It was a great way to talk to about the compost cycle, as the tomatoes had been grown with compost from our worm bins last year.  

The Green Apple Day of Service ended with a celebration by eating the food the different groups made.  It was a great way to have personal discussions about what they enjoyed and what they learned.  All in all it was a wonderful way to introduce our 6th graders to meaningful, green community service!

Volunteer With Us!

By Allison Maynard, Communications Associate


Did you know it's possible to not only join as a member of our Chapter, but to volunteer your time at events and activities as well? There are opportunities to volunteer as a LEED Study Jam Group Instructor, Webinar Proctor, Green Building Analyst / Reporter, USGBC Ambassador, Green Building Tour Coordinator, Outreach Committee Co-Chair, or any part of Committee Leadership.

For many of these positions you can have little to no LEED experience or knowledge, while other require LEED knowledge and a certification. Any of these positions are helpful to fulfill CE hours to maintain LEED Green Associate or Accredited Professional accreditation. The different positions also allow for a lot of flexibility in scheduling, as they only require a few hours of time per month on average. 

Learn more about these positions here!

 

Disrupt CRE: Back in Boston!

By Grey Lee

DisruptCRE is a conference like no other. They showcase the best and brightest ideas from the most innovative minds in technology and commercial real estate. The goal is to be a catalyst of change by merging the built environment with technological innovation. The presenters will explore how technology is facilitating the changes in the future of investing, developing, managing, leasing, buying, selling, & financing commercial properties.

USGBC MA Chapter is proud to sponsor this event – and help usher in the future of real estate!

It’s these innovators who are disrupting the status quo by bringing new ideas to market.

Hundreds of thought leaders from the Greater Boston area are expected to be in attendance, running from 12:00-6:00 p.m. at the BSA Space at 280 Congress St, Boston.

1:00pm-1:05pm
Conference Opening, Host Intro

CREsource is excited to be hosting this conference in the historic city of Boston. We thank you for attending and participating in this exciting gathering!

 

1:05pm-1:20pm
The State of Innovation: CRE & Tech w/ Jonathan Schultz, CEO – ONYX Equities

 

1:20pm-1:45pm
Disruptors Introduction Pitch (45 Seconds Each) & Meet “The Executives”

 

1:45pm-2:30pm
Meet the Exhibitors: Exhibitor Showcase & Dealmaking

 

2:30pm-3:00pm
Panel 1:
 Technology, Finance & CRE: The New World of Investing in Income Producing Properties

Technology is unquestionably taking CRE industry by storm. A major question has been, just how much could it actually change the business of CRE?

3:00pm-3:30pm

Panel 2: BuildingTech: Owners & Managers Embracing The New Tenant Culture

From the building systems to the employees, to advanced analysis of key data points, we are more connected and engaged with our buildings via personal technology than ever before.

 

3:30pm-4:00pm

Panel 3: Data, Analytics & CRE: Building Transparency

With the amount of data being generated and shared every day, commercial real estate professionals have an incredible opportunity to make better use of information. 

 

4:00pm-4:30pm

Panel 4: Tech Tools: New Products & Services Transforming Today’s CRE Professional

Oh how times have changed…The days of the rolodex and “knocking on doors” is over! Today’s CRE landscape demands that you manage a variety of tools.

4:30pm-5:00pm

State of CRE Tech: The Executive’s POV

 

5:00pm-6:00pm

Cocktail Hour, Networking
 

Link here to learn more about the program and to see the list of panelists.

Come network with the disruptors behind the companies who are at the forefront of our fast paced and ever changing industry. Join us for our thought provoking panels with industry leaders who will be discussing disruptive new models and technologies that are changing the dynamics of commercial real estate.

Attendees will learn about the wide gap between commercial real estate and technology, and how technology is and will continue to dramatically change the business of real estate. We look forward to helping connect our USGBC MA Chapter stakeholders to other leaders in the real estate industry to explore how we can continue to disrupt the industry for improved outcomes for all.

From last year:


The interview with our panel, post-stage:


Meet our Members: Alana Spencer

By Allison Maynard, Communications Associate


Alana is a Sustainability Project Manager at Vanderweil Engineers focusing on LEED, Sustainable Design, and Energy Efficiency in the C+D and built environments. Vanderweil is primarily a MEP engineering firm and she works on the Sustainability Team within the firm. They offer integrated MEP/Sustainability services for their projects.  

Currently, she co-chairs the Events Committee at the USGBC-MA chapter.  This Committee organizes green building events throughout the year in the Boston area. Their goal is to raise awareness on all the amazing achievements in green building projects and products (LEED, Energy Star, Living Building Challenge, etc…) here in Massachusetts while educating those who attend our chapter’s events to inspire the continual growth of sustainability in the building community. If you have an idea for an event or on how they can enhance an event, your feedback is vital, feel free to reach out to them. This is a great community to be involved with, feel free to join the committee as well.

In her spare time, Alana works with various sustainability groups in the Boston area, continues to expand her sustainability knowledge base, and travels as often as she can. She's looking ahead to getting more involved in improved Resiliency efforts here in Boston and also learning more about the WELL Building Standard. On the Myers-Brigg test, she's an INTJ which translated into Star Wars characters, is the equivalent of Palpatine – so you know she is serious about sustainability with such a personality.

The Slides of the Showcase

By Grey Lee


At our 2015 Green Building Showcase, we were able to share a lot of information with the assembled guests.


Our Sponsors were able to talk with folks about their various solutions to the challenges of green buildings. Thank you, again, to Kim Cullinane and Eversource for serving as our Platinum Sponsor, and to Joel McKellar of Harvard Green Building Services for being our Venue Sponsor.



We saw all sorts of projects through their display boards and many of those project principals were able to explain the details.

I was able to present a comprehensive overview of the Chapter – click here for the full presentation

Scroll down to read more from some of the most intriguing slides.

Thank you again, one and all, for attending the 2015 Green Building Showcase!








 

The Winner of the Green Building of the Year Award is The Summer Star Sanctuary!

By Allison Maynard, Communications Associate


Congratulations to The Green Engineer, who performed essential services for their submission for the Green Building of the Year of 2015: the Summer Star Wildlife Sanctuary in Boylston MA.

The Green Engineer, Inc. is a sustainable design consulting firm, led by Chris Schaffner, P.E., LEED Fellow, a nationally recognized expert in cost-effective, high-performance design. They work with architects, builders, commercial owners, nonprofits and the government sector to provide consulting services which include LEED Certification Project Management, Life Cycle Analysis, and Energy & Daylight Performance Analysis and Modeling.


The Summer Star Wildlife Sanctuary was The Green Engineer's 91st ‪LEED‬ project and boasts a 52% energy savings. Summer Star's Trail Head House houses an Art Gallery, Studio Space, an A/V Cave, and the grand-scale glazed Sanctuary Room for story-telling and small performances. Inspired by old pioneers like Malcolm Wells, and new initiatives like the Living Building Challenge, Summer Star’s values manifest themselves in the building’s photovoltaic arrays, thermal shutters, composting toilets, rain-water pool, and elsewhere. Landscape elements include permeable parking, defined pedestrian and vehicular circulation systems, meadow planting within an existing clearing, new woodland gardens and reforestation plantings. Partially within the 100 foot setback of a river flowing to the reservoir, a number of bioretention features are located to infiltrate stormwater runoff.


Thank you to The Green Engineer for being a great firm with a mission so well-aligned with ours, and thank you for being a sponsor. Thank you also to Shalin Liu, the Summer Star benefactor, for your vision and positive energy to make this project really shine!

 



Day of Service – Boston University

By Celis Brisbin, Programs Manager

The Massachusetts Chapter would like to say a big thank you to Eversource for their support with the following project. If you would like to see more on Eversource's commitment to community and schools, check out our blog!

Webinars This Month: California Schools Connect the Drops and BIMagination

By Allison Maynard, Communications Associate


This month we have two great Webinars: California Schools Connect the Drops and BIMagination: From 3D to 5D.

For California Schools Connect the Drops three Bay Area firms will share the stories of how a few forward-thinking leaders and local K-12 schools challenged the system and their organizations and overcame regulatory and behavioral barriers in order to change minds, redefine values, and impact behavior around water – for themselves, the students, and their communities.The target audience for this course is school administrators, LEED consultants, teachers, parents, school boards and any others interested in making change at their schools regarding water usage. LEED experience is not required but could be helpful.

You can register for this webinar here!

At BIMagination: From 3D to 5D you can learn about Building Information Modeling (BIM) which enables designers and project teams to model various building elements, components, and configurations to achieve optimal energy usage and green building functionality. Many believe BIM will become standard practice for building green at some point in the future. It produces the greatest advantages when the entire project team is involved at the design phase by enabling team members to assess inputs and outputs as modeling intelligence grows with each modeling iteration.

Registration for this webinar is here!

A Success of a Showcase!

By Grey Lee

What an amazing group! What amazing project stories to share! What a lovely time together. Thank you to everyone for coming out – for producing boards and for entering our awards program. Also, thank you to our Platinum Event Sponsor: Eversource, and our Gold Sponsors: View Glass, Suffolk Construction and National Grid

You can read the entire program guide with the stories of each sponsored project here.


The weather was a little iffy, but we managed to welcome over 150 people and 45 project story boards to the Green Building Showcase at Harvard's newly LEED Gold art museum facility at 32 Quincy Street – the Calderwood Courtyard.


Thank you to our excellent Silver Event Sponsors: Chapman Design/Construction, HDR, PCA, Sasaki, Skanska, Solect, The Green Engineer, Touloukian Touloukian, and Tsoi/Kobus.


This was our special annual gathering to meet, re-connect, and share how are are all a part of this green building movement.

Each of the professional disciplines represented are always striving for excellence. As a community we celebrate the achievements of exemplary green buildings. Through the USGBC MA Chapter, we participate as colleagues across roles – as integrated project teams and potential teams. The Chapter provides ways for people to learn about new techniques, to meet new colleagues, and to maintain goodwill even if you haven't worked on a project together in a long time. USGBC MA provides places and ways for our people to connect. Who knows? Maybe, in one of the many laughter-filled conversations, the seeds for the next great green buildings were planted last night! 

[The next eight photos are courtesy John Picard and the New England Real Estate Journal – from their Facebook page]

 




And yet, it wasn't all just networking and schmoozing. 

We had some speeches to hear. I took the liberty of making a few remarks about our community, our industry, and our progress as a movement. Some mentioned I got a little “meta” – but when do I otherwise get to preach it? Thank you for listening. We will be posting the presentation slides here soon. 


Key Points:

1) We are on a mission to transform our communities toward sustainability within a generation.

2) We do this by promoting high-performance green buildings as the most practical and large-scale thing we can do to improve environmental and social justice outcomes

3) We are advocating for a market transformation by recognizing andcelebrating leaders in green building and creating a synergistic community of professionals who can answer the call for better buildings

4) We are advocating for legislative and regulatory changes to ensure everyone comes around; right now our legislative priorities are:
—a) Asserting the Stretch Code and advocating for net zero construction policies
—b) Ensuring PACE financing is available for renewables, e. efficiency, and resiliency projects in MA
—c) Reforming the State's net metering regulations to ensure continued aggressive deployment of renewables in a safe & fair energy grid

5) We also help our community of professionals with green building education, GBCI and AIA credential maintenance, mentoring and networkingopportunities.

6) We also serve our broader communities with service projects, pro bono work for non-profits, help improve sustainability education in schools, and support our peer environmental organizations with advocacy work that overlaps with our agenda.

7) Each individual in the green building industry can improve their professional practice, build their network, serve their community and benefit from volunteer leadership opportunities with the Chapter. 

8) Let us know if you there is an aspect of green building that you are fired up about – we can help you help find a place & a role with us to turn that into a positive impact for Massachusetts and the world beyond!
 


One of the Chapter's major sponsors, Eversource, was able to provide significant funding for the event as the Platinum Sponsor, and Kim Cullinane (above, center left) was able to address the crowd to talk about their Energy Efficiency programs where designers can get grants from Eversource to help model & design better performing buildings. If you haven't checked it out lately, their program is constantly improving based on user feedback – please contact Kim to learn more.


We also heard from Joel McKellar, Associate Director of Harvard Green Building Services, who have managed more LEED projects on their campus than any other institution in the world. 

He was emphatic about the benefits of certified LEED buildings on their campus:

“Thanks to the energy efficiency improvements in our LEED facilities alone, every year Harvard saves $4.7 million dollars in utility savings, and more importantly avoids over 11,000 tons of carbon. Over 15,000 students, faculty, and staff spend at least part of their day in an efficient, healthy, and productive LEED certified space. In less than a decade we reduced our total emissions more than 20%, and that’s after accounting for nearly 3 million square feet of growth on campus; however, this progress is just one step on the path to much greater reductions that are required if we’re going to tackle climate change.

“In the past year, Harvard has launched updated Green Building Standards and a new University-wide Sustainability Plan. These documents, the former a set of requirements for today and the latter a vision for our future, advance our emissions reduction goals, investigate net-zero and Living Building Challenge possibilities, and expand our definition of sustainability to a more holistic concept… one that sets the overall well-being of our students, faculty, and staff as critically important to our sustainability mission.  It is clear from the significant changes surrounding material ingredient disclosure and optimization in LEED Version 4 that the USGBC is aligned with Harvard in continually evolving to develop healthier, more productive buildings. Since last December, we are proud to have a standard that requires LEED Version 4 for all of our major projects on campus, and we see this as a key measure in reducing harmful chemicals of concern from being installed in our dorms, classrooms, and labs.  Harvard, like the USGBC and LEED, have been able to evolve and improve over the past decade, and we look forward to continuing with these efforts.”

Thank you Joel, and thank you Harvard University for sponsoring the event in your awesome new museum space.

 


And then it was time for the Awards!

Congratulations to Architerra for winning the 2015 Innovation in Green Design award, for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife Headquarters in Westborough MA. This is an amazing net zero energy building which demonstrates the Commonwealth's commitment to these better buildings.


And then, the Green Building of the Year Award, which went to The Green Engineer for their work on the Summer Star Wildlife Sanctuary in Boylston MA. Congrats to the team, and to the project's driving force, Shalin Liu who was there to participate in the ceremony.


 We want to thank all the award entries, it was difficult for the judges as we have so many great buildings in Massachusetts. Thank you to members of the Events Committee for helping with the Awards Program and of course Mark Richey Woodworking for donating the actual awards.


The event would not have been possible without the help of our committee and the staff team who helped bring it all together. Also, thank you to the Harvard Art Museums staff, especially Shawna Plummer, and The Catered Affair, esp. Bryanne Pepin, Neil and King, and all the team members, who made the event come off without a hitch. 

Below: Tiffany King, Chris Meier, [me, Grey Lee], John Picard, Floyd Sipe, Alana Spencer, and Brice Hereford. Not shown here are Carrie Havey, and Jim Newman, and staff Celis Brisbin, Allison Maynard and Maria Vietz.


We look forward to seeing you all again soon!

 


 

See more photos from the Showcase on our Flickr album here!

 

UTC Leads the Way at Green Apple Day of Service

By Allison Maynard, Communications Associate


United Technologies Corp. (UTC), a founding sponsor of the U.S. Green Building Council's Center for Green Schools, encouraged their employees worldwide to lead events for the Green Apple Day of Service this past weekend. UTC's 2015 Service events for the fall season were kicked off in Shanghai by employees from Carrier, Otis, Sigma, Chubb, GST and UTC Aerospace Systems. The volunteers renovated classrooms at the Qingpu Yinxian Primary School and created a library corner with learning materials emphasizing environmental stewardship. Projects in the United States included working with students to build bird feeders using recycled materials in Connecticut to planting a garden and teaching students the benefits of healthy eating and sustainable food production in Florida. 

“UTC's steadfast commitment to the green schools movement is best exemplified by their annual participation in Green Apple Day of Service,” said Rachel Gutter, director, Center for Green Schools, U.S. Green Building Council. “Since we launched the event in 2012, hundreds of UTC employees have dedicated their time to organize and lead high-impact school transformation projects throughout the communities in which they live and serve. By acting on the shared belief that where our students learn matters, UTC leadership on Green Apple Day of Service has accelerated our progress toward providing safer, healthier, more efficient learning environments for all students within this generation.”

This coming week NORESCO, a part of UTC, will lead students in an energy audit at Boston Public School's Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, as part of the USGBC's Massachusetts chapter's largest Green Apple Day of Service event in our chapter's history.