Dru Meadows - Preparing a Building Service Life Plan for Green Buildings

Copyright 2014 by Dru Meadows. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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G reen building publications generally advance bold, attention-grabbing challenges with sexy solutions. The reader is transported to a deep green utopia in which, with the right effort, everyone will live sustainably ever after.

This is not one of those books.

Service life planning is not sexy. It is not even new. But its use in green building gives it a new twist that is as stunning as it is unexpected.

There is a practical elegance in a green Building Service Life Plan (BSLP). It is applied life-cycle thinking. It doesnt estimate potential environmental consequences. Rather, it outlines a plan of action to help manage impacts. A green BSLP provides guidance on material maintenance (so the service life can be as long as possible) and reuse/recycling options (so the end-of-life impacts can be managed as sustainably as possible).

The concept of a green BSLP is straightforward. Yet, there remains confusionamong service life professionals, environmentalists, and building industry professionals. Some service life professionals resist the new direction, or seek to marginalize it as secondary to economic issues. Economic issues are important, but they are not central to a green BSLP. Environmentalists often fail to distinguish between Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and applied life-cycle thinking. LCA is a useful evaluation methodology, but doesnt outline a course of action. A green BSLP provides practical information to help you know what to do. And, there lurks a concern in the building industry that a green BSLP might imply some sort of product guarantee or warranty. After all, it talks about product service life. A good, green BSLP does not in any way provide a guarantee or warranty. It is not a promise. It is a plan. It relies upon the user to implement it.

A green BSLP is the new use of an old tool. This book describes that subtle, but powerful, transformation. It identifies the growing adoption of the green BSLP in green building codes and standards. And, it offers a template that may be used by green building practitioners along with an example of a complete green BSLP. In developing the example, I relied primarily on the related trade organizations for product durability and maintenance information. They are the experts in their fields. Most of them offer a substantial amount of product guidance publicly available online. The text is heavily footnoted accordingly. Hopefully, this will allow the reader to expand his or her research as may be necessary to develop a project-specific green BSLP. And, assist building product manufacturers in their outreach and communication of green service life issues.

Dru Meadows

The International Code Council (ICC) is a member-focused association. It is dedicated to developing model codes and standards used in the design, build, and compliance process to construct safe, sustainable, affordable, and resilient structures. Most U.S. communities and many global markets choose the International Codes. ICC Evaluation Service (ICC-ES) is the industry leader in performing technical evaluations for code compliance fostering safe and sustainable design and construction.

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