The most successful green building process incorporates a multi-disciplinary and integrated design approach that promotes collaboration, encourages innovation, fosters partnerships and synergies, and evaluates performance.
The experiences of many project teams, both public sector and private sector, suggest that the conventional linear design process is a major barrier to achieving high-performance, green buildings. An integrated design process is far more successful.
Project teams that use the Integrated Design Process seek to optimize performance on a wide variety of well defined environmental and social goals while staying within budgetary and scheduling constraints. Key to the process is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative team whose members make decisions together based on a shared vision and a holistic understanding of the entire project.
The Integrated Design Process is:
- An iterative process.
- A flexible method.
- Different each time.
- Innovative, with ongoing learning and evolving features.
To overcome a tendency to stick with a linear design process, the British Columbia Green Building Roundtable, the City of Seattle, and King County, Washington, developed a guide and training module targeting industry professionals. The training module will be incorporated into their educational programs and available through their websites in early 2008.
