Energy Save New West is exploring the creation of a “Green Building Kiosk” to support the development of new low-energy and environmentally sustainable buildings in the City of New Westminster that perform above basic BC Building Code standards with respect to energy efficiency.
Initially, the focus for the Kiosk will be on low-rise residential construction (Part 9 of the BC Building Code), and support preparing the local design and construction community for eventual implementation of enhanced energy standards within the proposed BC Energy Step Code.
To ensure the Kiosk meets the needs of the new home building industry and owners/purchasers of these homes, the City organized and hosted a workshop in January with key stakeholders to obtain input on the optimal audiences, messages and formats that the Kiosk should provide to achieve the objective to have more energy efficient homes built in the City.
Energy Save New West was grateful to the attendees of the workshop which included representation from the building industry, architects/designers, City staff and other local governments and academic community.
To provide a clear structure for obtaining input at the workshop, five (5) key stages of home building were identified to explore the opportunity, value proposition, and formats that the Green Building Kiosk can serve. The design/build stages included Concept, Preliminary Review, Building Permit, Construction & Midpoint Evaluation and Occupancy.
Workshop participants discussed two key questions to help define who the Green Building Kiosk could target, and the types of opportunities that may result in increasing the energy efficiency of homes built in New Westminster:
- Who is involved in each stage of the building process that can influence the energy efficiency of the home?
- What is the opportunity to improve the energy efficiency of the home at each stage?
Through the workshop, several interesting ideas were shared by participants including recommended formats, tools and information that could be included in the Kiosk development. More specifically, workshop attendees prioritized Kiosk formats that are more dynamic (e.g. video or interactive software) and web-based to better engage audiences.
Additionally, it was also recommended that green building information will need to be better integrated into the existing design/build process and should be combined with tools that the builder/designer community can use to clarify and improve processes for building high performance new homes.
Stay tuned to Energy Save New West for upcoming announcements on next steps with the Green Building Kiosk.