There is no other place where everyone who impacts the built environment comes together to find solutions. This year, BI2021 is even bigger. Anyone within the building industry is invited to attend. Sessions will cover a spectrum of developments in the areas of workplace, technology, resilience, and the challenges that COVID-19 brings to the built environment.

This course will discuss considerations for the holistic design and construction of durable, long-lasting structures that are sustainable, safe and resilient. A building's primary goal is to protect the lives, lifestyles and livelihoods of its occupants. Precast concrete has numerous qualities that can help buildings perform efficiently and offer occupants and communities healthy, flexible and useful spaces that can be effectively utilized over many years. Attendees will have the chance to see and hear case studies of projects that used precast concrete for durability, resilience, and sustainability, and examine important qualities and attributes to consider when specifying the material.

Learning Objectives:

1. Define the concepts of resilience and sustainability with a focus on holistic design and long-term, lifecycle performance.
2. Analyze how material choices made impact the safety and wellbeing of occupants over the life of the building and future design concepts.
3. Explore opportunities where sustainability, resilience, durability and efficiency intersect.
4. Identify how precast, prestressed concrete can contribute to designs that are sustainable, efficient, durable and resilient enough to protect the lives, livelihoods and lifestyles of occupants and communities.
5. Examine case studies of sustainable, resilient and safe projects that effectively utilized precast concrete to achieve their goals.

There's no other event that brings together this unique set of individuals – government agencies, contractors, the private sector, architects, scientists and more – to improve the built environment. The conference will cover four topic areas in the built environment with expert-led sessions. Earn AIA LU credits, ICC credits, and certificates of attendance for conference attendance. Topics include:

RESILIENCE 

NIBS and the American Institute of Architects define resiliency as the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events. Between the pandemic and a growing number of catastrophic natural disasters, the built environment is at the forefront. Disasters are expensive, but most destruction can be prevented with cost-effective mitigation and advanced planning. New and existing practices must be developed or changed through research, advocacy, and education. A special focus will be placed on ensuring the resilience of the nation’s building stock, covering topics in the built environment relating to resilience due to climate change, natural hazard risks, and sustainability efforts. 

TECHNOLOGY 

New and advanced technologies rapidly are developed and deployed across the building industry, with major potential shifts in how the industry conducts day-to-day business. In addition to research and development into new technologies, the industry must be prepared for how these technologies will be adopted and utilized. NIBS is working to prepare the industry for new opportunities, as well as promote advanced, efficient, and safe structures. Building Innovation 2023 will showcase these advanced technologies and practices and highlight how the industry can best prepare for their adoption and deployment.

BUILDING PERFORMANCE AND SUSTAINABILITY

Performance and sustainability are critical components of a structure. A sound technical and economic foundation will aid optimum energy efficiency in the design, construction, operation, and modification of new and existing buildings. BI2023 will tackle improved coordination of these building components, ultimately leading to improved building performance and sustainability.

WORKFORCE

The built environment workforce is evolving. While half of the workforce has been part of the industry for 20+ years, according to a study by NIBS, newcomers to this field are committed to growing diversity, equity, inclusion, access, and belonging. At Building Innovation 2023, attendees will learn more about social equity in the workplace and the future of the built environment workforce.

Greenbuild is the world's largest conference and expo dedicated to green building. The ideals and passion of the green building community come alive at Greenbuild. The buzz is contagious. Greenbuild brings together industry leaders, experts and frontline professionals dedicated to sustainable building in their everyday work, and a unique energy is sparked. Participants are invigorated. Inspired. They find themselves equipped to return to their jobs with a renewed passion and purpose.

Building Innovation 2024 will bring together everyone who impacts the built environment to explore challenges, possibilities, the latest tools, groundbreaking strategies, and more.

Digital twins – detailed digital replicas of physical buildings – are recognized for enhancing design, management, and operational processes.

This session will present the fundamentals of digital twin technology, its integration with building information modeling (BIM), and the creation of interactive, real-time building models. It will highlight the technology’s role in optimizing various stages of a building's lifecycle, from planning to operation.

Attendees will learn about the application of digital twins in the building sector through case studies. These examples will demonstrate the technology's impact on occupant health, environmental sustainability, and operational efficiency. The presentation also will address challenges in adopting digital twins, including industry standardization, setup costs, data privacy, skill requirements, and the need for interdisciplinary collaboration.

Mass timber structural systems are gaining popularity in U.S. construction of multi-unit residential buildings and office buildings for a number of reasons. Mass timber is well suited for prefabrication and reduced construction schedules, has low embodied carbon, can be exposed aesthetically, and can be built taller than traditional light-framed wood construction.

Because modern uses for mass timber are relatively recent, practitioners are still learning about mass timber system selection, relevant design provisions for mass timber structures, and design decisions’ effects on final design performance. Many guides and tools for mass timber structural design exist; however, these resources offer limited guidance during the early design stage when key decisions are made. Further, the available resources do not typically link multiple design goals to each other to understand how early-stage design decisions affect multiple project goals.

Based on the parametric modeling of mass timber floor structures, this presentation discusses design guidance for early decision-making related to the following performance goals: embodied carbon, fire design, structural depth, floor mass, and acoustic insulation. The discussed guidance and related parametric model data will be included in a free design guide to be released at the end of the year as part of the AIA Upjohn Research Initiative.

session presentation

The built environment consumes 40% of all resources globally, generally following the take-make-waste linear economy.

By contrast, the circular economy in the built environment is a systems-based industrial framework designed to tackle global sustainability challenges, such as climate change, waste, and biodiversity loss. In a circular economy, products and materials are reused, repaired, recycled, or repurposed to create new products, contributing to a more sustainable and resource-efficient economy.

A circular economy is a crucial component of the pathway to net zero. It’s being used by several companies, including Desso, Interface Carpet, IKEA, and Patagonia. It’s also been a long-standing pathway for William McDonough’s Cradle to Cradle concept for architectural design.

Further, the latest U.S. Acts (IRA, CHIPS, and IIJA) include circular economy goals as a way forward to:

• recirculating critical materials
• federal buy clean initiative
• extending product lifecycles
• reducing greenhouse gas emissions
• creating new industries and jobs
• avoiding unnecessary disposal of products and materials to mitigate emissions associated with embodied carbon

In this webinar, attendees will learn about the elements of the circular economy and why it is a resilient and timely system that is good for business, people, and the environment.

View the Session Slides

Join us for an insightful webinar focused on the integration of BIM and Digital Twin technologies in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations (AECO) industry. This session, based on a newly released position paper developed by the National Institute of Building Sciences and written by leading AEC practitioners, educators, consultants, and technology leaders, will dive into the innovations and efficiencies that these technologies bring.

The webinar will not only demystify technical capabilities and promote efficiency but also highlight the availability and key insights of this comprehensive position paper. Attendees will gain an understanding of the distinct yet complementary roles of BIM and Digital Twins and learn how the position paper will help with integrations and streamlining practices.

View the Presentation Slides

Public awareness of the need to improve indoor air quality (IAQ), ventilation, and air filtration in buildings greatly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Post-pandemic, several things have taken place: The Biden Administration announced the Clean Air in Buildings Challenge in 2022, held a White House Summit on Sustainable K-12 School Buildings and Grounds, and released a toolkit this past spring. In June 2023, ASHRAE finalized Standard 241, Control of Infectious Aerosols, a pioneering consensus-based standard that provides explicit requirements for airborne infection risk management, which have been absent for a century from IAQ standards. In July, Congressmen Paul Tonko (D-NY) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) introduced the Indoor Air Quality and Healthy Schools Act.

The Environmental Protection Agency refers to IAQ as the air quality within and around buildings and structures, especially as it relates to the health and comfort of building occupants. Controlling common pollutants indoors can help reduce the risk of health concerns and is the job of everyone on the building team.

The U.S. Department of Energy defines energy efficiency as “the use of less energy to perform the same task or produce the same result.” As buildings use less energy, we need to know how indoor air quality is affected by:

• Ventilation
• Insulation
• Building materials
• Energy-efficient appliances
• Control systems and operations

Balancing IAQ and energy efficiency is crucial to create healthy, comfortable, and sustainable buildings. By integrating efficient ventilation strategies, choosing the right materials, and utilizing advanced technologies, it is possible to enhance both IAQ and energy performance?

Our expert panel will discuss strategies for integration, including whole building design, performance monitoring, education, and workforce training.

Presentations

ASHRAE Presentation  USGBC Presentation  WELL Institute Presentation