Wood Design Focus: Environmental Verification for Wood Products Used in Green Building

A JOURNAL OF C O N T E M P O R A RY WOOD ENGINEERING Volume 20, Number 1

Spring 2010

In This Issue: Green Buildings and Sustainability

Editorial ………………………………………...…………..…2 Green Building and Implications for Wood Markets Jim L. Bowyer………………………………………………..3 Environmental Verification for Wood Products Used in Green Building Rob Brooks and Dave Gromala……………………..……...8 Green Building Programs: The Importance of the Design Phase Jed Hannemann…………………………..……………......12 The Green Building Initiative Mark Rossolo……………….…………….…………...……16

Environmental Verification for Wood Products Used In Green Building: Two New Evaluation Systems Simplify Product Specification A Conversation with Rob Brooks and Dave Gromala Abstract With so many building products claiming green attributes, sorting through which ones are legitimate and which ones are exaggerated can be challenging.

Two wood products industry professionals, who were involved in the creation of new third-party evaluation systems for building materials, discuss how design professionals can use these systems to get accurate, verifiable information linked to major green building rating program requirements. The highlighted systems are: x ICC Evaluation Service’s (ICC-ES®) Sustainable Attributes Verification and Evaluation™ Program (SAVE™) Verification of Attributes Reports™ (Figure 1), and x National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Research Center’s Green Approved products certificates (Figure 2).

Participants Rob Brooks, Green Buildings Program Director, iLevel by Weyerhaeuser, www.iLevel.com Dave Gromala, Director of Sustainability Program Development, ICC Evaluation Service (ICC-ES®), www.icc-es.org; www.saveprogram.icc-es.org Wood Design Focus: It seems that new green building rating systems are launching regularly. What is the purpose of the evaluation systems from ICC-ES and the NAHB Research Center?

Rob: In short, the ICC-ES SAVE and NAHB Green Approved products systems provide a link between codes, products, and green standards. The two systems are intended to give design and building professionals quick and easy information on products’ green building attributes. These tools provide independent verification of manufacturers’ green claims and link listed products to specific point categories within green building rating programs. The intent is to save engineers, architects, and specifiers a lot of 8

time researching that information themselves. The tools also help streamline the process for earning a green home or building rating.

Dave: It all comes down to ease of use. In the green market, there’s a big tendency for messages to be overly complicated. Our goal at ICC-ES is to make information on green products simple, yet accurate and credible, with background details for those who want to drill further into the issue. We want to provide information that can be readily shared from the architect to the builder to the green building program rater—it’s a way for them to work from the same set of data.

Wood Design Focus: How are these tools different from existing systems? Don’t green building rating systems such as LEED already cover this?

Dave: These tools take the next step in tying together the green building process by specifically showing how a given product—say laminated strand lumber, wood I-joists, or solid sawn lumber—can earn points within specific categories in the rating systems. That’s something the rating systems themselves don’t do. In the case of the ICC-ES SAVE program, it’s the first of its kind to both verify the sustainability of building materials and determine how the products may qualify for green building points within multiple green building rating systems, including LEED® for Homes, LEED for New Construction and Major Renovation, the National Green Building Standard™, Green Globes®, and the 2008 California Green Building Standards Code.

Rob: Green building rating systems like LEED typically provide a checklist of green building features that can be included to earn a rating. They don’t usually specify whether a given manufacturer’s products are eligible or not. It’s largely up to the architect or builder to make a case for how a given product fits within the rating standards. With these new tools, they get third-party verification that the products are eligible to contribute points. PreWOOD DESIGN FOCUS

Figure 1. International Code Council Evaluation Service’s Sustainable Attributes Verification and Eva luation Pro gram (saveprogram.icc-es.org).

qualified environmental claims make the overall green building process much simpler by giving accurate information to the party of interest.

Wood Design Focus: Beyond the design professionals and builder, what are the benefits to other parties involved in building projects?

Dave: Building professionals have long been accustomed to using product evaluation reports for code-related issues, such as fire and structural. Now, green building is being added to the mix. The product verification reports bring a host of information about a product’s attributes into one place. This helps everyone who has a hand in designing or building a project. Code officials and green project raters are also key beneficiaries. Providing them with access to prequalified environmental claims reduces the amount of compliance paperwork on their end. That in turn speeds the process for getting a rating, which is key for the architect and building owner. These tools also give consumers a way to evaluate which products meet various sections of multiple green building standards. They can become much more closely involved in the green building process.

Rob: Manufacturers benefit from having prequalified environmental claims when answering environmental questions about their products. Requests for information about product compliance to a rating system, for example, range from detailed information for a single product to a list of potential credits over an entire product line. The ICC-ES SAVE and NAHB Green Approved Product certificates allow the manufacturer to answer a large range of questions with a

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single document, not to mention the customer benefit of having this useful reference for future projects.

Wood Design Focus: With the building market expected to remain tight through 2010, how can these tools make a difference now?

Dave: Green building is one of the few niches that’s faring relatively well through the recession.

Homeowners and commercial building owners are still keenly focused on price, but they are increasingly willing to incorporate green elements into their building projects. The ICC-ES and NAHB Resource Center tools can help building professionals deliver green projects more cost effectively. Plus, by becoming familiar with such tools now, they’ll be in a better position to build green when the overall market comes back. Even for those who don’t want to pursue a green rating for their buildings, the tools provide a wealth of information that can be used in developing a quality structure. And, information from these reports can be readily incorporated into marketing messages regarding a building’s green features.

Rob: A lot more people are demanding that manufacturers prove how and why their products are green. The SAVE program and NAHB Green Approved Products labels help us demonstrate that iLevel products, software and customer services are in line with the major green building rating systems.

I think in the coming year we’re going to see more push back on green claims, and these tools help building professionals know that they’re specifying appropriate products. Although 2009 was a lean year for all manufacturing firms, iLevel showed initiative and leadership by assisting in the development and 9

Figure 2. National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Research Center’s National Green Building Certification Program (www.nahbgreen.org).

expansion of these two programs, which helped us establish credible green claims without adding significant cost to our products. We believe that our investment will be replicated by other manufacturers so that customers can ultimately compare green claims between products based on a common reference by an independent, third party.

Wood Design Focus: What aspects of wood building products does the ICC-ES program address?

How about the NAHB Green Approved Products certificates?

Rob: Wood product information is captured in ICC-ES Verification of Attributes Reports, which address engineered wood products, lumber, plywood, OSB, and sheathing. VARs can also list how specialized tools such as design software and support services to builders and dealers on pre-cut and panelized components fit into the major green building rating systems. The heart of the reports are a series of concise tables that list specific areas within each rating system and show whether a product is eligible for points or has attributes that are verified outright.

For example, LEED for New Construction includes a point category for low emitting materials. The VAR shows with bullet points which products have that attribute, and how many points are possible.

An additional feature of the VAR reports is that they provide a way to see how products fit into complex areas of green building such as Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA). For wood building products specifically, ICC-ES has identified the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials (CORRIM) report as a ‘verified’ attribute for residential woodframe construction. This applies if the end-user agrees to the boundary conditions and life cycle data established in the report. It’s an important connection between the common use of wood in residential con10

struction and the complex analysis typically done by LCA professionals.

The NAHB Research Center’s Green Approved product certificates have a format comparable to the ICC-ES SAVE reports, but are primarily intended to show compliance to the ICC-700 National Green Building Standard for residential structures. For example, if a user is specifying a Green Approved engineered wood product, the product certificate shows the specific ways those products can contribute to green building rating points and spells out how they must be used.

However, the most useful aspect of the Green Approved product certificates is that the product information is automatically uploaded into the software scoring tool so that builders have immediate access to this information when scoring a project based on the ICC-700 standard. They can click on “Green Approved Product” in any section of the software and learn which products have already been preapproved. The benefit is that all parties involved in construction have access to the same Green Approved product list. That list is primarily intended for residential building, while the ICC-ES SAVE program is intended to address the broader spectrum of commercial and residential building.

Wood Design Focus: How rigorous is the product rating process? What assurances do these tools provide of accuracy and independence?

Dave: There’s a lot of depth to these reports. It’s not just “send us the money and we’ll give you a report.” Manufacturers who want to pursue a rating for their products must submit detailed information to ICC-ES on a host of product features. We evaluate products according to guidelines that address the entire production process, from raw material acquisition to final manufacturing and packaging. For examWOOD DESIGN FOCUS

ple, one of our guidelines addresses whether materials for major components of a building are manufactured with primary energy derived from renewable sources such as biofuels. If the manufacturer is making a claim about renewable energy use in their products, we require them to submit proof that at least 33 percent of the primary manufacturing process uses renewable energy (to comply with ICC-700).

Wood Design Focus: Any final thoughts?

Rob: There are two primary perspectives when it comes to green. First, the architect or engineer is looking for products that meet green criteria set forth in the green building rating programs. We make it easy to do that by working with ICC-ES and the NAHB Research Center to evaluate our products.

Second, a lot of valuable green features of buildings are not inherent in the products themselves, but in how they’re used in the overall building design.

Full-service manufacturers like iLevel provide information not only on their products, but also on how to use them as part of green building. We offer software that helps designers optimize the use of our framing materials, and we also work with building product dealers on implementing ways to more efficiently cut

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and pre-fabricate components.

This helps reduce construction wood waste and cycle time on the jobsite.

Dave: We are striving to simplify this process to serve the needs of manufacturers, design professionals, builders, and building officials. But we’re not there yet. ICC-ES is working aggressively with the Figure 3. InternaNAHB Research Center and tional Code Council others to coordinate reviews National Green in an attempt to eliminate in- Buil ding Stanterpretation conflicts and con- dard—ICC-700. fusion. Because there are no consensus-based standards for these interpretations yet, we are working hard to develop a common basis for “green” verified attribute reports.

The process for development of ICC-ES evaluation guidelines, like our historical acceptance criteria process, is being refined based on public review and comment. These guidelines will ultimately form the basis of a suite of consensus-based standards and evaluation procedures.

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