COLUMNS

By Scott Kriner
There are plenty of green rating programs that describe building materials and products. More products today are being promoted with sustainability claims such as their Environmental Product Declarations. This is a step toward transparency to inform a designer, building owner or user about the environmental impact from the production of these products. And then there are “red lists” that are being promoted by the Living Building Challenge, Perkins + Wills, and even USGBC’s LEED v4, to caution designers from using products that contain certain chemicals that are reported or suspected to be carcinogens or toxins.

By Lexie Braza
Business blogging is the most productive way for any company to achieve social media success. A stagnant website offers little in terms of search engine optimization (SEO). Blogging is often a method used to increase organic search ranking, by continuously producing new content to be indexed in search engines.

By Paul Collyer
Well, we’ve survived three columns together. Now it's time for installment number four, everybody's favorite, Negotiating and Closing. Today we will learn certain magic tricks to transform even the most belligerent client into a happy buyer. Okay, maybe not magic tricks, but sound negotiating principles that can be used during our next closing attempt.

By Shawn Zuver
Once upon a time, there was no written communication and the only way to exchange information was by word of mouth – and even before that, it was likely a system of hand and facial gestures, which I can only imagine led to a great deal of ambiguity and rampant misunderstanding. Fortunately, that pre-dates all of us by at least thousands and thousands of years. Or, is “fortunately” really the best word choice?

By Scott Kriner
The Rocky Mountain Institute reports that a typical homeowner could save about 28% in heating and cooling costs just by improving their insulation and tightening air leakage in the roof/attic and walls. This amounts to a savings of $400 per year for the average American home. But choosing the proper type of insulation is often confusing. This is especially the case with the concern of the environmental impact or “green” nature of the products.

By Charlene Riegger
Building green. It seems everywhere we look there is some kind of statement or message about green building and the environment. While the greening of America is a noble trend, as a contractor, it can be time-consuming to wade through all the information and figure out what is not only truly good for the environment, but good for your bottom line, and good for your customer’s bottom line too. Implementing natural daylighting in a building project is an easy way to gain a quick return on investment while going green, and doing so can also contribute to LEED® credits. You won’t have to learn about any new contraptions or complicated installations.

By Joe Landsverk
At Wood's Powr-Grip® (WPG), we regularly receive calls from industrial safety managers requesting information about vacuum lifter safety and maintenance; and we are only too happy to help in any way we can. It's good that there is a growing concern about worker and work place safety. According to the U.S. Dept of Labor's (DOL) Commonly Used Statistics, there were 4,609 U.S. workers killed on the job in 2011–nearly 13 per day. It's encouraging that this is a 7% decrease from 2010! But even one fatality is too many.

By Bob Zabcik
Being a building scientist is kind of like being a librarian. You have to separate fact from fiction. Case in point: The Green Building Movement. I’ve been a building designer for 20 years and I have never seen the kind of change and repositioning of building science in the time that I’ve seen in just the last five years. And of course, with that comes agendas, minutiae, politics and confusion. It’s unavoidable. So, when people ask me about green building, I feel the duty to encourage them to stick to what is tangible and measurable and try to stay out of speculation.

By Scott Kriner
I would venture to guess that many people have never heard of the RESNET organization. RESNET is the Residential Energy Services Network, a national standards-making body for building energy efficiency rating and certification systems. A large percentage of their membership is comprised of energy raters who come into a home or work with builders in new construction to audit or assess the energy efficiency of the building. RESNET provides training for these raters, provides quality assurance requirements, accredits modeling software used by the raters, and advocates for the building construction energy ratings of homes and commercial buildings.

By Lisa Beally
March is here you know what that means… madness, basketball madness! Have you got your brackets set? As a contractor in today’s construction market you have your own madness. Project Managers are not picking IU, Notre Dame or Purdue, they're picking you and your competitors for their contractor brackets. You might not be competing against 64 other contractors in the bidding madness but you are still competing. What sets your company apart from the other contractors bidding on this project?

By Tim Lane
While the use of asbestos dates back thousands of years, it was not until recently that the dangers of this mineral’s needle-like fibers were widely understood. Prior to that, cultures the world over relied on asbestos’ super-strengthening properties to improve cookware, furniture, and even articles of clothing.

By Bob Zabcik
As an engineer who works for a metal roofing company that also sells roof-mounted photovoltaic (PV) equipment, I have the incredible opportunity to help people turn their roofs into money making machines. That’s more literal than you think, especially if you have good incentive programs available to you or your electricity costs are high or varying over the course of the day. I’ll leave the environmental green reasons for another article. I’m talking cold, hard cash here, folks. I’ll be very honest: A PV system is a sizable investment. But they can also have rates of return associated with them that make day-traders salivate.

By Paul Collyer
In the previous two columns we’ve learned that selling is an easy job performed by overpaid salespeople playing golf during the weekdays and feasting on lavish company paid dinners. Oh wait – wrong perspective…selling is an incredibly difficult job performed by people with extraordinary skill and talents – much better!

By Scott Kriner
At this time of year, many of us find ourselves in the dead of winter. Thoughts of spring and warmer weather are dancing through our heads. We celebrated Groundhog Day in this month and welcomed the forecast of an early spring. It is amazing that in the 21st century our faith in predicting changes in weather, seasons and climate are based on professionals ranging from meteorologists, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Punxsutawney Phil.

By Ken Buchinger
In an effort to cut electricity costs and to help the environment by burning fewer fossil fuels, photovoltaic (PV) arrays are becoming very popular in spite of their significant installation costs. To further stimulate this trend, the DOE’s SunShot Initiative has been created to make solar energy costs competitive with other forms of energy by the end of the decade in an effort to drive widespread adoption of this renewable energy technology.