Each building design scheme an architect considers has a unique energy footprint. Yet the vast majority of architects do not incorporate energy use into their scheme selection process, even though it is the most important energy decision they make. Achieving a reduction of 50 percent fossil fuel use in a building design cannot be done by an architect or engineer alone and most certainly cannot be achieved during the last phases of the design process. Incorporating energy into the scheme selection process is critical to achieving substantial energy reductions. And with the building information modeling (BIM) tools available today, incorporating energy into the scheme selection process is remarkably easy to achieve. Understanding today’s BIM technologies, their process change implications, and the enormous benefits they are giving to firms seeking to meet today’s energy and resource use reduction goals is what this program is all about.

   Learning objectives:

• Discover why the most important energy decision an architect can make is in the building design scheme selection process
• Determine that analyzing the energy of each scheme can be cost effectively done with today's BIM tools as well as sharing information with an engineer, energy consultant, or LEED consultant
• Achieve a 50 percent fossil fuel reduction in energy by determining how to use an engineer effectively in scheme selection and early charrettes to greatly increase the chances for an energy- and resource-efficient design