What does Green Building have to do with Software Development?
We are in the process of developing an open-source web 2.0 project for the green building community. The Green Building Brain is a database of green building and planning resources. By facilitating the sharing of information the project is designed to accelerate and increase the industry's impact on increasing building sustainability.
The open-source model of development has had a substantial impact on the field of sustainable, or green building. Traditional design and construction has operated on a hierarchical model of decision making and protection of intellectual property, whereas green building design incorporates the shared development model of open-source, involving all designers, as well as the users and operators throughout the design and construction of a project.
There have been innovations in the field of green building that could also benefit the open-source development community. The Integrated Design Process (IDP) involves all of the project stakeholders in a series of design workshops or "charrettes", and has been practiced on scales from half a dozen participants to "BIMStorms", live on-line design charrettes involving whole cities and hundreds of participants. This process can be applied not only to buildings, but to any design problem, including software development. We will discuss how this process can be applied and how it was implemented on the "Green Building Brain" project.
Combining online collaborative tools, with frequent intensive live interactions is also affecting the creation of a sustainable community. Drawing an existing community online is a challenging process, and many well-designed projects have failed due to not paying enough attention to this crucial step. We will discuss the challenges and lessons learned in taking a project from a small group of initiators, to a local community of stakeholders, and finally transitioning to an international user base.
Brenda has over 15 years experience in the building industry working on residential, institutional, commercial and industrial projects throughout British Columbia.
Her experience includes office, medical and rehabilitation renovations, recreation facilities, and libraries, the scopes vary from design, construction administration, and project management to facilities management and LEED Coordination. Brenda is deeply involved with the US and Canada Green Building Councils (USGBC and CaGBC) and the development community in the following roles:
* Board of Directors, Cascadia Region Green Building Council
* LEED Faculty
* Technical Advisory Group (TAG) member
* Chapter Committee of the CaGBC
* NAIOP Development Issues Committee
* City of Vancouver Green Building Strategy Committee
