Zooming way out
Our collective work on decarbonization, energy savings, and resilience is still vitally important.
On this Earth Day, we’re zooming way out and renewing our focus on big picture, long-term goals and the cumulative impacts we can have with our daily actions and shorter-term projects.
- Anna
Photo by NASA on Unsplash.
Zooming Back in
Certified Passive House Consultant
Nate Heckman recently earned the Passive House Institute US (Phius) Certified Passive House Consultant (CPHC) credential after completing the self study materials over the last several months, the in-person web training in December, and passing both the written and design exams.
Recent Project Work
Code Official Digitization and Efficiency Support (CODES)
Resource Refocus is on a team led by the International Code Council (ICC) that is working to develop a digitization roadmap to support small and under-resourced jurisdictions in their transition to electronic code enforcement processes. The team is partnering with several jurisdictions across New York to digitalize their building and code departments. We recently completed several stakeholder engagement interviews and a web-based focus group that have influenced the first draft of the roadmap.
This work is funded through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act through the first round of the US Department of Energy Resilient and Efficient Codes Implementation (RECI) project. The team also comprises Clarkson University, +LAB Architect pllc, New York Department of State, and New York Association of Towns.
The roadmap and other initial project deliverables will be available on ICC’s website later this spring.
Conferences & Presentations
ASHRAE
Carrie Brown recently presented at ASHRAE NYC and Urban Green’s Earth Day 2025 event. She shared insights on the role of weather data in future-looking, resilient design in a presentation titled “Future Weather/Climate Data is More Important Than You Think!” along with Brian McKinney from JBB Deep Carbon Reduction.
University at Buffalo Guest Lecture
Rhys Davis was recently a guest lecturer at the UB School of Architecture and Planning, where he discussed energy code development in New York State to 80 graduate architecture students.
California Green Buildings Conference
Anna will co-present at the California Green Buildings Conference with Ed Dean about electrification in California schools. The conference will be held at the Fort Mason Center from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm on May 22, 2025.
Volunteer Spotlight
IBPSA USA
Carrie was recently in the spotlight for her service to IBPSA-USA. Carrie has served as the President, Vice President, and Secretary, and has served on over a dozen conference committees.