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Banner photo: William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Menlo Park, CA. The Hewlett Foundation's building was designed to save energy and increase the comfort of occupants through individually controlled systems such as operable windows, localized manual floor diffusers, and natural light control throughout the workspace.
Photo credit: Wm. & Flora Hewlett Foundation
Reference Guide™
Applying the Benchmark™ to high performance building design
This Reference Guide is targeted to architects, engineers, contractors, commissioning authorities, and other building professionals. Each guideline contains detailed information on how to implement the Advanced Buildings Benchmark criteria, written by experts and reviewed by peers. It is the goal of the Advanced Buildings series to contain the most useful, accurate, and credible information possible.
The goal of the Reference Guide is to provide a complete reference tool that provides most of the information needed by design professionals to produce cost-effective advanced buildings. In many cases, the Advanced Buildings Reference Guide references other documents that contain even more detailed information. A few of these documents are listed below:
- New Buildings Institute (NBI). Advanced Lighting Guidelines: 2003 Edition. www.newbuildings.org/lighting.htm
- Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E). Cool Tools. www.hvacexchange.com/cooltools
- California Energy Commission (CEC) and New Buildings Institute (NBI). PIER Element Three Research, Integrated Design of Large HVAC Systems. www.newbuildings.org/pier/downloadsFinal.htm
Meeting and Going Beyond the Advanced Buildings Benchmark Criteria
The Reference Guide serves two key purposes. First, it provides detailed explanations on how to use the Advanced Buildings Benchmark system and how to meet the Advanced Buildings Benchmark criteria.
The Reference Guide describes in detail the two general types of Benchmark criteria: Basic (required) and credit. The basic criteria in Advanced Buildings Benchmark are applicable to all buildings and include a choice of two approaches: the prescriptive approach or the simulation approach. Credit criteria are optional.
- Basic Criteria are necessary for all buildings to be deemed high performance and to meet the Advanced Buildings Benchmark. Within the required criteria, a project team will choose either the prescriptive approach (basic + prescriptive) or the simulation approach (basic + simulation).
- Criteria for Credit recognizes additional performance beyond the required levels and can be used to meet program goals set forth by program administrators (i.e., utility programs, LEED).
Second, the Reference Guide recommends measures and design strategies that go beyond the Advanced Buildings Benchmark. These additional materials address daylighting concepts, advanced mechanical concepts, and advanced building envelope schemes among others.
Organization of the Reference Guide and Additional PowerYourDesign.com Web Materials
The Reference Guide is organized into six chapters as described below:
- Introduction
- Process, Quality Assurance, and Documentation
- Building Envelope
- Mechanical Systems
- Electric Lighting and Daylighting
- Power
The organization of the Reference Guide is meant to serve both integrated design and technical subject matter purposes on a project. This dual-purpose is accomplished by directing the chapters on building envelope, mechanical systems, lighting systems, and power toward specific design disciplines while Chapters 1 and 2 cut across design disciplines and focus on integrated design and whole-building performance.
High-Performance Building Goals
The materials presented in each chapter are intended to help achieve the following goals, which are issues that cut across each of the major disciplines:
- Health and Indoor Air Quality (IAQ)
- Thermal Comfort
- Visual Comfort
- Acoustic Comfort
- Security and Safety
- Energy Efficiency
Anatomy of Each Criteria Section
Each criteria section in the Reference Guide provides the following information for each topic.
- Requirement. Advanced Buildings Benchmark criteria language or relevant sections of the Advanced Buildings Benchmark criteria document are repeated here for easy reference.
- Description. More detailed information on the technology or design strategy.
- Applicability Chart. Indicates the applicability of the guideline to particular spaces, climate zones, and design process steps. See the next section for more information on the climate zones covered in this manual.
- Applicable Codes. Lists the codes and regulations that apply to the building feature described in the guideline. Although not generally listed in this national document, local ordinances may also apply in some jurisdictions.
- Integrated Design Implications. Describes the implications that the design strategy or technology might have on other building systems, e.g., if cooling load is significantly reduced by high-performance fenestration, the mechanical system might be made smaller and natural ventilation might become more viable.
- Cost. When possible, this section indicates incremental costs for implementing the criteria guidelines. Cost premium information on a per-unit basis has also been included where available and appropriate. The units might be floor area, surface area, horsepower, peak Watts, or per unit (lamp, ballast, etc.).
- Benefits. This section identifies and describes the benefits expected from implementation of the measure, including energy savings, improvements in indoor environmental quality, productivity benefits, etc.
- Cost Effectiveness. This section describes the benefits and costs of the strategy/technology on both a system basis and an overall project basis. The chart (see example below) shows construction costs on the vertical scale, ranging from low to medium to high. The horizontal scale represents benefits, also categorized from low to medium to high.
For ranking the overall benefits and costs:
- Low represents an increase in costs or benefits of 0% - 2% over the base case system.
- Medium is a cost or benefit increase of 2% - 8% over the base case system.
- High is an increase in costs or benefits of more than 8% over the base case system.
- Design Tools. This section lists any applicable design tools, including software that can be used to optimize the design, quantify the benefits, or estimate construction costs. In some cases, the section will describe a technique for using a general-purpose tool such as DOE-2 to evaluate and analyze the design.
- Design Details. This section contains more thorough details on the design, such as rules of thumb, specific recommendations, sample specifications, or schematic diagrams.
- Operation and Maintenance Issues. This section outlines potential operation and maintenance concerns and requirements for keeping the strategy/technology operating at optimal performance.
- Examples. This section provides some project examples that have used this technology or design measure.
- Commissioning. This section discusses the need for calibration, functional tests, static tests, commissioning plan requirements, statement of design intent, post-occupancy tests, and other issues and requirements related to ensuring that the strategy/technology was implemented as the designer intended.
- References/Additional Information. This section provides a sampling of documents, websites, etc. where additional information about the strategy/technology can be found.
Integrated Design Process
To assist your firm in taking the first step toward an integrated design process, Advanced Buildings has created the Advanced Building Reference Guide and Design Process Checklists. Those resources provide a set of maps, narratives and reference lists so that the design team can set clear expectations with the client and other team members. Design Process Checklists are developed for the following:
- Pre-design. Recognizes the benefits of charrettes by offering checklists for this process, to assist your team in answering the proper questions for a successful high performance design process.
- Schematic Design. Using nationally developed guidelines, prompts your team to evaluate key elements early and set achievable energy and environmental performance goals.
- Design Development. Emphasizes the need to evaluate and optimize various building systems prior to detailing for construction.
- Construction Documents. Recommends that your team look ahead to the construction and start-up phase by reviewing constructability, specifying pre-approved start-up tests, and setting clear performance targets that can be tracked and measured by the owner once the building is occupied.
- Construction Phase. Offers acceptance test procedures for major energy-consuming mechanical and lighting systems. These procedures can be performed by the architect, engineer, contractor or owner's agent.
- Post-occupancy Phase. Extends the design team involvement into the building operation through operator manual development and training, using the control system to monitor system performance and a one-year warranty review.
Each checklist provides your team with criteria for key decisions to consider at that particular phase of the design, actions to take regarding those decision criteria, and additional resources to help meet project goals.
Commissioning: Advanced Buildings Resources
Advanced Buildings supports commissioning by providing pre-defined "acceptance tests" that the installing contractor, architect or engineer, or owner's agent can perform on various building systems and equipment. These tests confirm that the equipment was installed and calibrated properly, and is performing according to the design intent.
In addition, post-occupancy reference lists ensure that building management, maintenance staff and operators have access to the correct information. The checklists also help the operators utilize the building control systems as a tool to maintain an efficient and comfortable indoor environment.
Using the Benchmark and Reference Guide to Help Achieve LEED Credits
Green building ratings systems and utility programs are two important reasons to design buildings that are better than code minimum. The USGBC LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) rating system requires that all buildings to minimally comply with ASHRAE Standard 90.1-1999 or the local code, whichever is more stringent.
Meeting the Advanced Buildings Benchmark basic and prescriptive requirements will ensure this. Up to 10 LEED credits can be earned for designing a building that is more stringent than ASHRAE Standard 90.1-1999. The Advanced Buildings Benchmark address credits primarily in two of LEED's categories: Indoor Environmental Quality and Energy and Atmosphere categories.
The New Buildings Institute is working with the USGBC to accept compliance with the Advanced Buildings Benchmark as evidence of achieving savings beyond code minimum. A separate detailed publication, The Advanced Buildings Benchmark LEED Guide, maps out and describes the applicability of Advanced Buildings Benchmark criteria to LEED credits. This publication is available at www.poweryourdesign.org. The summary table of the Advanced Buildings Benchmark-to-LEED mapping in the Advanced Buildings Benchmark LEED Guide is reprinted in Appendix A of this Reference Guide.