Capabilities

GREEN INQ provides green/sustainable planning and design services to building owners, developers, and their design teams to create “green” sustainable construction projects at the building, community and regional scales. We have developed a range of service to meet the specific needs of our clients from feasibility analyses and strategic planning to energy design and life cycle economic analysis. Our sustainability energy & environmental design services include:

Sustainable projects meet the needs of present generations without compromising the needs of future ones. Planning and design strategies are developed to cause no overall net environmental burden or deficit within the functional, budgetary and time constraints of the project. The goal is to maintain bio-diversity, balance the rate of consumption with the ability to renew resources, maximize the use of regional resources and strive to recycle and reuse virtually all materials required by the project while creating a healthy and productive environment for human activity. Green projects minimize resource requirements, maximize production efficiency and minimize waste. The “green” approach extends from the spaces within a building to its local context, to its community, region and ultimately to the planet and beyond. The result is the healthiest and most productive environment possible.

Our interest is primarily focused on strategic sustainability planning, and the integration of “green” criteria that will guide project decision-making toward more sustainable site and building designs.  Through a team of specialty design professionals, GREEN INQ  provides expertise in the areas of environmental, energy and cost analysis, utility/agency coordination, design team facilitation; funding augmentation, and technology transfer.  Each team member contributes on an as needed basis in their particular area of expertise and appropriate to project requirements.

The goal of the GREEN INQ approach is to provide unique services to support the design of buildings that use energy efficiently, have good indoor air quality and a supportive working environment, maximize the use of renewable energy technologies and demonstrate environmentally sustainable solutions that meet the cost and financial requirements of the project.

GREEN INQ’s “green” facilitation team will work with the project team, but will not assume any of the responsibilities of individual team members. Our responsibility is to enhance the design process by walking the project team through an integrated process of  “green” decision making, provide “green” strategies for consideration and analysis, establish selection criteria consistent with project requirements and, as much as possible, identify building design strategies that are consistent with the project budget.

For each project, performance criteria is developed to:

Cues and insights from successful recent projects are considered where feasible.  Published reports and case studies are used to demonstrate how a new technically and architecturally sophisticated building can be designed to be both environmentally sensitive and cost-effective.  Selected reference projects show how environmental issues can shape the design of the facility. 

Each design measure is justified in terms of life-cycle costs, its potential impact on the quality of the indoor environment, and building materials are selected to allow only the lowest levels of emissions and toxicity.  The entire construction process is reviewed and tradeoffs are made, but the measures that remain pay off.