The Total Facilities Live event held from 19-20 July at Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre, was actually four built environment events all sharing the same roof. Paticipants were privy to a diverse range of insight and information from the Total Facilities Conference, Total Facilities Expo, Safe Buildings Expo and Energy Solutions Expo.
The Director of the US Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings, Kevin Kampschroer, was one of the Keynote speakers of the event and opened the second day with his presentation entitled Transforming Federal Buildings into High Performance Green Buildings. By the title you may have surmised his department retrofits old federal buildings to reduce energy usage and improve performance.
This Department is part of the U.S. General Services Association (GSA) and has some ambious goals including 30 percent reduction in total energy use in federal buildings by 2015 and a 55 percent drop in fossil-fuel use in new and renovated federal buildings. These goals designed to help the GSA meet it’s overall target for complete elimination of fossil-fuel use by 2030.
As reported by Lauren Davis for Sustainabilitymatters.net.au, Kevin’s Keynote covered case studies on the work they have already completed, one of his success stories was the historic Wayne Aspinall Federal Building (pictured above, built 1915-1918), which is about to achieve net zero carbon emissions. The key to this has been to think in an integrated way, less about design and more about performance.
Read Lauren Davis’s full article covering all the key messages from the event
Kevin’s most recent publication as a contributing author is the first medical study showing the link between building characteristics on office worker stress and heart function-which showed the beneficial results of good lighting, natural light and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ).
