From planning to working with contractors, industry experts offer 7 tips to keep projects tracking during challenging times

Effectively removing viral particles from your home atmosphere is tricky. Success depends on the speed of airflow, filter size, dispersion, and a little luck.

YOU'RE PROBABLY WONDERING if your HEPA or MERV air filters will protect you and your family from spreading Coronavirus around the house.

When it comes to COVID-19, there are a lot of numbers floating around, but the math is easy.  Here are the important variables:

Real number of cases

Rate of increase

Critical care rate

Number of hospital beds

Mortality rate

Let’s look at all of these for the US:

No one quite knows what the future will bring in these strange and unsettled times, but after talking with economists, building professionals, and manufacturers, I offer some insights into how the Coronavirus may impact the homebuilding sector.

There is nothing normal about this moment in time, and the Coronavirus has only just begun changing the rhythm of our lives. 

It’s unclear how extensively the Coronavirus will impact the economy.  Most economists agree that we’re heading for a recession.  Some project a “short but sharp” event, with a steep tumble in 2Q20 and a quick rebound in subsequent quarters.  Others forecast a longer downturn, with more dramatic impacts felt throughout the rest of the year.

The experts in pandemics — epidemiologists, infectious diseases doctors, and ministers of health — were sounding the alarm many weeks ago. They told us that exponentially growing infections could overwhelm a health care system much faster than we realize. And yet many countries, including the U.S., were caught flat-footed. 

On the final day of 2019, China first reported cases of the COVID-19 virus. As the crisis grew in Wuhan, the World Health Organization started to warn people with increasing urgency. It started with advice on hand washing and coughing into your elbow. But by mid-February the WHO was talking about the need to “maintain social distancing.” (see Feb. 13 version of the site).

Recent weeks have shown how dependence on corporate food chains can quickly fail us. Why not create a safety net of abundance for every home?

DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION of the 1930s, rural dwellers in some parts of the country continued life more or less as usual. For families used to growing and putting away their own food, running out of food wasn’t a constant fear. Cash was scarce, sure, but the Depression meant something different than it did for city dwellers, who were spending hours of anxious waiting in food lines.

[Note from the author: "This article was posted on MIT Sloan Management Review last week. I wrote it at the beginning of my family’s stay-at-home journey (we’re on day 15, but who’s counting). Things are moving so fast with COVID-19. I point out below that in a month the cases outside of China went from 400 to 90,000. But by the time you get this, the US will be closing in on 90,000 cases alone. And the world outside of China is suffering with 500,000 cases…and rising fast. These are hard times. It is too early to draw any grand lessons from it all, and frankly feels wrong as we are facing immense suffering. We need to focus on the emergency and taking care of ourselves and others. But I did feel the need to write something — it’s my own way to cope. So below are some observations about  this historic, painful moment and what it may mean for business. I hope you are all staying home and staying safe."]

In this special COGNITION Smart Data report, Green Builder Media highlights the impacts that we anticipate the Coronavirus will have on the homebuilding sector.

I sincerely hope that you and your family are staying safe and healthy. 

There are many unknowns swirling around the Coronavirus right now, but there is one thing of which I am absolutely certain: now is the time to step forward, be active, and provide people with ideas, inspiration, and authentic leadership.

Between the World Health Organization’s declaration that COVID-19 has reached levels of a global pandemic, President Trump’s European travel ban, CDC’s projection that up to 45% of U.S. citizens will contract COVID-19, and the NBA suspending the rest of its season, yesterday was rough.  But, the human psyche is resilient, and it’s only natural to grasp for even a sliver of silver lining.

Let me be perfectly clear—there is nothing good about the COVID-19 global pandemic.  The impact of yesterday’s announcements left me speechless, and almost hopeless.

But I am nothing if not an eternal optimist, so I find myself clinging to even the most remote possibility of a positive outcome.

No Cobra meetings, no sombre speeches from No 10, yet the consequences of runaway global heating are catastrophic

It is a global emergency that has already killed on a mass scale and threatens to send millions more to early graves. As its effects spread, it could destabilise entire economies and overwhelm poorer countries lacking resources and infrastructure. But this is the climate crisis, not the coronavirus. Governments are not assembling emergency national plans and you’re not getting push notifications transmitted to your phone breathlessly alerting you to dramatic twists and developments from South Korea to Italy.

(A repost from my MIT SMR column. I actually wrote it last fall as I was thinking through my larger climate strategy piece in HBR. I keep coming back to this question: how do we increase quality of life for what will be 9 or 10 billion people in a climate and resource-constrained world? In other words, how do we grow? It’s a thorny issue that we have to keep tackling.)

Longtime Santa Fe green builder Kim Shanahan writes a weekly column on building issues for the Santa Fe New Mexican called Building Santa Fe.  He is also an active participant on codes committees for the National Association of Home Builders.

The dry world of building codes recently experienced something akin to the space object smacking earth and wiping out dinosaurs.

Well, it’s certainly not bad. And yet…

At KBIS 2020 in January, Green Builder Media CEO Sara Gutterman moderated a panel with some of the nation’s top experts in kitchen recycling. 

Check out their panel, which took place on the KBISNeXT Stage, entitled Zero Waste Kitchens – Upcycle and Recycle, to get ideas for how you can tap into the growing circular economy movement!

As individuals, universities, investment funds, financial institutions, and even entire countries across the globe divest from fossil fuels, a new economic reality is emerging.  The writing is on the wall, and influencers ranging from BlackRock CEO Larry Fink to Mad Money host Jim Kramer are chanting the rallying cry.

At Green Builder Media’s recent Sustainability Symposium 2020: Improving the Human Condition, Green to Gold and The Big Pivot author Andrew Winston made it perfectly clear that the game is over for fossil fuels. 

The triple impacts of a labor shortage, rising material costs and out-of-sight land costs has dramatically limited the number and types of new homes being built.

Home building has undergone massive changes over the last few years. Far fewer homes are being constructed now, at far higher price points. Home ownership has declined, renters are on the rise. Scarcity of housing, especially in urban markets, has inflated rents and home values, leaving a large segment of the population on the sidelines.

Larry Fink is the CEO of Blackrock, the largest asset manager in the world, with more than $7 trillion under management. Every year in January, Fink writes a public letter to the CEOs of the world’s largest companies. For the last 5 years, he has made the case for long-term thinking and sustainability. In 2016, he said that the “culture of quarterly earnings hysteria is totally contrary to the long-term approach we need.” By 2018, he was hitting hard on the idea of purpose and last year declared that “Purpose is…a company’s fundamental reason for being – what it does every day to create value for its stakeholders. Purpose is not the sole pursuit of profits but the animating force for achieving them.”

They’re more than just a pat on the back—they steer the industry.

It’s easy to become cynical in these times of information overload. Does anyone really care about awards anymore? Aren’t we all so busy that we barely take time to look up from our phones and email and bills to applaud someone else’s success?

Buildings don’t move, so what do they have to do with transportation? Plenty.

While green building designers, builders, and developers have little say when it comes to zoning, highway and street development, transit routes, or street connectivity; they have good reason to care about transportation. And they have a significant role to play in increasing transportation efficiency.

At Green Builder Media’s recent Sustainability Symposium 2020, I delivered opening remarks that were intended to be both realistic and inspiring, pointing out the harsh reality of our situation while simultaneously outlining the many reasons to be hopeful about our future.

Amidst the unfathomable craziness that has become normalized daily life here in the U.S., I do my best to maintain some semblance of sanity. 

Heeding Comparative Mythology Professor Joseph Campbell’s advice, I try to joyfully participate in the sorrows of the world.  For, as Campbell says, “We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.”

At Green Builder Media’s recent Sustainability Symposium 2020, Andrew Winston, an internationally esteemed sustainability expert who works with the world’s largest companies, outlined five megatrends that are driving massive change in the business sector.

At Green Builder Media’s recent Sustainability Symposium 2020, sustainability expert Andrew Winston described the transformation that is taking place in the business sector—away from a singular focus on profitability and towards enhanced sustainability. 

“For decades,” Winston submitted, “companies existed just for shareholders, but things are changing.  Studies like the Edelman Trust Report show that 84% of investors agree that maximizing shareholder returns can no longer be the primary goal of a corporation.  There is a growing recognition that capitalism, for all of its strengths, really isn’t optimizing wellbeing.”

This year’s outstanding products demonstrate how sustainability can be enhanced when cloud-based apps and real-world engineering smarts converge.

Once again, we honor an elite group of manufacturers and products that are making real progress in reducing the impact of the built environment on our natural inheritance. They range from super-efficient heating equipment—easing the transition to renewable energy sources—to water-saving leak detection and responsive pool pumps. Our hope is that products like these, with help from smart technology, and durable, responsible choices in building materials, will steer us toward more-sustainable lifestyles in coming years. Let’s take a look at this year’s winners:

Although much of the world is actually losing ground in terms of CO2 pollution and resource waste, some American cities are showing that a carbon neutral future can be achieved NOW.

From simple steps such as EV charging stations and bike-friendly roads, to more-dramatic action such as changing building codes to phase out fossil fuels, this year’s three award-winning cities shine like beacons of hope. We give you three model cities, each achieving major strides toward addressing Climate Change, each on a different scale. Congratulations, Austin, Santa Fe, and San Luis Obispo!

Attending last week’s International Builders Show put on by the National Association of Home Builders, followed by a day at the fourth annual Sustainability Symposium put on by Green Builder Media, I can report the gas wars are heating up.

I’ll admit to former snobbery about cooking with gas. Fancying myself an accomplished home chef, I toed the party line. But moving into a home 10 years ago with an electric range, I had to adapt. Now I pride myself on expertly manipulating choices 1 to 10 on the dial. I’m pretty sure the pot of boiling pasta water doesn’t know the difference.

Industry stalwart Peter Pfeiffer’s four decades of building efficient, beautiful structures that are appropriate for their climates and locales has made an indelible mark on the industry.

When it comes to architecture, Peter Pfeiffer, Green Builder Media’s 2020 Sustainability Superhero, is a purist. Serious about the fundamentals of sustainable design, his mantra is quite simple: “Design the built environment to be appropriate for its climate and location.”

They say it may be the most overused cliché of all. You know it well: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Although the quote is generally attributed to Albert Einstein, there is no proof that he really said it. But whether it indicates actual insanity or merely foolishness, the act itself makes little sense.

Energy, air quality and connectivity are key areas residential homebuilders need to address. The VISION House® Seattle Cascades project embodies all of them.

Green Builder Media’s VISION House Seattle Cascades aims to be a replicable pattern for high-performance housing, and by replicable, that means for all housing types—from affordable to custom off the grid. When the VISION House team members, including homeowner C.R. Herro, envisioned this project, they turned to Green Builder Media’s COGNITION Smart Data to double-check the planned characteristics and features of the house against emerging housing trends.

Green Builder Media congratulates the winners of our 12^th annual Green Home of the Year and Sustainability Awards.  These exceptional projects, products, and people show us how we can solve for a changing climate and establish a sustainable future.

Each year, Green Builder Media’s Home of the Year and Sustainability Awards features the most innovative projects and products in the industry, as well as the people who build, design, and manufacture them.  This year’s winners delight and inspire, showcasing how creative thinking can result in optimized performance, aesthetics, and sustainability.   

Las Vegas warmly welcomes Green Builder Media’s Sustainability Symposium 2020 in a news segment that ties the environmental efforts of Las Vegas with those of America’s leading media company for sustainability. 

Las Vegas is the setting for the gathering of eco-experts and professionals at the fourth annual Sustainability Symposium on January 20. In recent years, the city has made great strides in renewables, energy efficiency, and water conservation. 

Green Builder magazine’s annual showcase of the best of the best includes SIP homes, stunning expanses of high-performance glass, and more.

Green Builder’s Home of the Year and Sustainability Awards program, now in its 12th year, shines the spotlight on cutting-edge green products, projects, and people. 

Serious about catapulting your business forward? Understanding the role sustainability plays in the growth and success of the building industry should be your first order of business.

Spending a day hearing from esteemed sustainability experts and networking with building industry leaders at the Sustainability Symposium 2020 is an enjoyable way to start off Design & Construction Week. But, more than that, it is a crucial education opportunity for professionals who want to compete and prosper in the rapidly evolving construction industry.

October 23, 2019

Experts say that we have ten years to change our ways before we enter into the Pyrocene, a new “fire age” induced by human activity that threatens to unhinge the planet.   Will the 2020’s marshal innovation that solves for the impending climate emergency, or will the next decade witness our dystopic demise, brought about by a Faustian agreement resulting from our greedy and short-sighted addiction to fossil fuels?

In 2015, Arizona State University professor Stephen Pyne coined the term, Pyrocene, describing a new Fire Age—the opposite of an Ice Age—resulting from our fossil-fuel based combustion economy. 

“By burning fuels from deep time,” says Pyne, “we are redefining the options available for generations to come. We are taking carbon from lithic landscapes of coal and petroleum buried in the geologic past, passing it through today’s living landscapes, and releasing it into the geologic future. Little of the planet is unaffected.”

To solve the world’s biggest challenges, such as climate change and inequality, the business community will have to play a critical role. And we need CEOs who understand the challenges and want to drive deep change in how business operates. Last month, nearly 200 CEOs declared, through the Business Roundtable (BRT), that the purpose of business is no longer just maximizing shareholder profit. But are they ready to follow through?

On Tuesday, a new and important study on CEO attitudes came out, and it sheds light on how chief executives think about sustainability and other global challenges. Written by Accenture and the UN Global Compact, “The Decade to Deliver: A Call to Business Action” collects insights from more than 1,000 global executives. Published every three years, this report provides a deep dive on how CEOs view sustainability. I found reasons for both optimism and concern in the data, but at the very least, it shows that the BRT’s call for broader view of stakeholders was not a fluke.

In an age where more companies are ‘dying young,’ innovation is the key to keeping your business around for another generation.

Who wants to live forever? For those of us who don’t, a long, healthy life, perhaps of about 90 years, is enough. In the mid-1920s, 90 years happened to be the average lifespan of a leading company. Ninety years for us, 90 years for our companies: a neat mirroring of our own existence in what we made manifest in the world.

Martin Luther King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  That’s why Green Builder Media’s fourth annual Sustainability Symposium 2020, scheduled on January 20, 2020, Martin Luther King Day, will focus on the nexus between sustainability, social equality, and financial abundance.  The event promises to be our best Symposium yet, with a remarkable lineup of luminaries leading the transition to a sustainable future.

Green Builder Media is wildly excited about our upcoming Sustainability Symposium 2020: Improving the Human Condition, scheduled for January 20 at the Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall  on the UNLV campus. 

Rhiana Gunn-Wright, co-author of the Green New Deal, explains how the plan synthesizes sustainability, social justice, and economic prosperity.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright has accomplished more in 31 years than most people achieve in a lifetime.  Former Policy Director at New Consensus (an esteemed global think tank), 2013 Rhodes Scholar, and policy analyst for First Lady Michelle Obama, Gunn-Wright co-authored the Green New Deal, a resolution that was introduced earlier this year to Congress by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Edward Markey (D-MA).

Green Builder Media has joined forces with CR Herro, VP Innovation at Meritage Homes, and internationally renowned architect Stace McGee to design and build the VISION House Seattle Cascades.  The goal of the project is lofty: to redefine sustainability and set a new standard for building green in the current marketplace by blending sustainability, quality, durability, intelligence, and wellness—all at a reasonable price point.

In this webinar, Herro and McGee will discuss the building science, sustainable design, and green building features of the VISION House Seattle Cascades.  The off-grid, net-positive, healthy home optimizes demand-side energy management and incorporates of the most advanced green building products, systems, and technologies available on the market today.

The webinar will also address the outdated price per square foot valuation metric and how we plan to more appropriately measure full cost through quality, performance, resilience, and environmental impact. 

Tuesday, December 17, 2019
1:00 Eastern

Despite the fact that it has become a political hot potato, the Green New Deal, originally introduced by congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Edward Markey (D-MA),  has broad bipartisan support.

I don’t usually play the futurist game — I’m more of a “presentist,” looking at the data we have right now on fast-moving megatrends that shape the world today. But a client asked me to paint a picture of what the big trends tell us about 2030. And I’d say we do have some strong indications of where we could be in 11 years.

Consumers now call the shots when it comes to specifying products for their homes, and they’re willing to spend more to save more.

Green Builder Media has been surveying readers for more than a decade, asking how much of an impact consumers have on product specification decisions. Ten years ago, builder and architect respondents indicated that homebuyers only influenced such decisions 10 percent to 20 percent of the time, and that was generally in categories such as appliances and finishes.

With COGNITION Smart Data, Green Builder Media’s pioneering suite of market intelligence and data services, we’re able to track essential market trends, behavioral patterns, and purchase intent across audience segments and geographies.

We keep a close eye on a wide spectrum of elements that drive the market, ranging from consumer preferences that create market pull, to innovations, codes, and building professional attitudes that drive market push.

With COGNITION Smart Data, Green Builder Media’s pioneering suite of market intelligence and data services, we’re able to track essential market trends, behavioral patterns, and purchase intent across audience segments and geographies.

We keep a close eye on a wide spectrum of elements that drive the market, ranging from consumer preferences that create market pull, to innovations, codes, and building professional attitudes that drive market push.

With COGNITION Smart Data, Green Builder Media’s pioneering suite of market intelligence and data services, we’re able to track essential market trends, behavioral patterns, and purchase intent across audience segments and geographies.

We keep a close eye on a wide spectrum of elements that drive the market, ranging from consumer preferences that create market pull, to innovations, codes, and building professional attitudes that drive market push.

With COGNITION Smart Data, Green Builder Media’s pioneering suite of market intelligence and data services, we’re able to track essential market trends, behavioral patterns, and purchase intent across audience segments and geographies.

We keep a close eye on a wide spectrum of elements that drive the market, ranging from consumer preferences that create market pull, to innovations, codes, and building professional attitudes that drive market push.

A perfect storm of labor, regulatory, land and materials costs have crushed the housing market to half its former size. Can data transparency revive the boom times?

Builders often take the heat for high housing costs. But often, they’re playing the role of reactors, not actors. That’s not to say there aren’t some operators out there who ask too much in terms of margins and do inferior work that’s destined to cause heartache for homeowners.
But by and large, these are not the readers of Green Builder. What’s facing our sector—the high-performance segment of the homebuilding industry—are powerful external forces, including labor shortages, radical tariffs on lumber, a dysfunctional lending system and populations migrating toward urban hubs.

In 2018, California passed a mandate that will require solar panels on most new homes and multi-family buildings beginning in January, 2020.  But as builders, installers, manufacturers, and homebuyers are ramping up to prepare for the directive, its future is in question.

The Golden State made history last May by passing a mandate that requires new homes to have solar beginning in January, 2020.  The ruling applies to most single-family homes, as well as multi-family buildings up to three stories (including condos and apartment complexes.)  Homes that are not suitable for solar (for example, those surrounded by large shade trees) will be exempt.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, over one quarter of Americans currently live in all-electric homes.  But that number is about to explode as municipalities from coast to coast phase out natural gas to tackle climate change.

According to the Rocky Mountain Institute, “Seventy million American homes and businesses burn natural gas, oil, or propane on-site to heat their space and water, generating 560 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.” 

But California, generally the harbinger of progress in the U.S., is changing the game, blazing a trail towards net zero emissions homes and buildings, as well as a completely carbon-neutral economy by 2045.   

On Monday, President Trump officially began the process of pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, sidelining the world’s largest economy from crucial discussions about climate change—the greatest challenge of our generation, and the opportunity of a lifetime.