Sustainability

Our sustainability experts have extensive experience in multiple sustainability rating systems, including all versions and rating systems of LEED, Green Globes, Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS), Living Building Challenge (LBC), Core Green Building Certification (CORE), Fitwel, WELL Building Standard, SITES, and ENVISION.

• Our team has helped certify hundreds of projects under multiple rating systems. Our staff credentials include the following: LEED AP (BD+C, ID+C, ND, O&M), Fitewl Ambassador, WELL AP, Envision SP, Living Future Accreditation, EcoDistricts AP, Green Globes Professional.
• We lead design charrettes to establish sustainability goals and determine the best rating system for the project.
• For multifamily and affordable housing projects, we offer expertise in a variety of Green Building Certification programs. These include HERS, Energy Star for Homes, Zero Energy Ready Homes, National Green Building Standard (NGBS), and LEED for Mid-Rise.

We conduct whole building life cycle assessments to measure the embodied carbon of a building and provide guidance on how to minimize this impact.

• Group14’s whole building life cycle assessments provide an accurate picture of the environmental and cost trade-offs inherent in system and product selections.
• We work closely with design and construction teams throughout the life of a project to help identify sustainable, cost-effective solutions.
• Group14 guides clients on how to maximize investment dollars while minimizing their environmental footprint.

Group14 specializes in organizational resilience and resilient design strategies for the built environment. Using our understanding of climate change vulnerabilities, we evaluate a project’s ability to adapt and manage risk. Resilient design helps to preserve the value of building assets and the safety of building occupants.

• Group14 conducts assessments to identify site specific vulnerabilities, risks and hazards, such as, extreme heat, lack of potable water or utility outages.
• Hazards include utility outages, hail/severe snowstorms, extreme heat waves, flooding, and lack of potable water.
• Based on the resiliency assessment, we present evidence-based strategies to mitigate risk and enhance asset value and operations.
• Group14’s resiliency consulting applies to several third-party certification systems.

It is essential that the built environment considers equity, wellness social impact and health.  Group14 works with project teams to create a positive social impact and to guide them on community-specific strategies that enhance equity, wellness, social impact, and health.

• We work with social impact and health ratings systems, including the Living Building Challenge, Fitwel, WELL Building Standard, Enterprise Green Communities, and SEED.
• Group14 guides project teams in addressing mental health and wellness by incorporating elements of Trauma-Informed and Biophilic Design.
• Group14 incorporates occupants’ lived experience into building designs through various forms of stakeholder engagement including surveys, focus groups, and community outreach.