Iterative process and systems

thinking

The iterative process is the core of the integrative process which is a process for
calculating a desired result by means of a repeated cycle of operations. Number of
cycles will always depend on the outcome and how close it is to the target result.

Each iterative process contains a lot of feedback loops that provides opportunities for
synergies and verifying goals to ideas and strategies. An iterative process has a
repetitive characteristic that starts with establishing specific goals, hold collaborative
meetings, research the related ideas and concepts, gather the team for opportunities for
synergies and to avoid trade-offs, set new goals based on the outcome of the meeting,
repeat the cycle with in the timeline and when it’s clear and sufficient, implementation
should start.

This can be called also system thinking that differs from traditional processes which
are linear and non-repeatable. In system thinking the team works together instead of
individuals and the work produced will come from the team not from individuals same
as in integrative process.

It’s important for the team to establish clear goals in the planning and predesign
phases as it will facilitate the design phase. Also, awareness sessions should be
conducted to ensure all team members understand iterative processes and how to
tackle the issues in a repeated cycle.

Milestones and set dates should also be assigned to compare it to the sustainability
goals and to take actions if there is a deviation from achieving it. If the team applied
the iterative process correctly, the team will be able to address changes and make a
well-discussed decision.
The team can also assign a coordinator or a facilitator for the whole process to connect
all team members and introduce any change to the process, by doing so, the team will
cut the communication time and will have an easy way to inform any change through
one person. Documentation for the whole process is required to maintain consistency,
clarity and ability to all team member to track the drawings and documents.
Coordination meetings, Workshops small task groups and presentations are all
required during the whole process of the project as it will broaden the view for all
disciplines and provide assistant to them.
Leverage
points

An intervention point in which a small change in a complex system can produce a big
change in everything, it’s a places to intervene in a project process or system. The
most important part of intervening into a process is to know where and when exactly to
intervene. Leverage points are like a points of power that with a really small change
can produce a huge change.

There are a particular places to intervene in a system that are as

follows:

(In increasing order of

effectiveness)

12. Constants, parameters,

numbers

11. The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their
flows.

10. The structure of material stocks and

flows

9. The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system

change.

8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to impacts they are trying to
correct against.

7. The gain around driving positive feedback

loops.

6. The structure of information

flows.

5. The rules of the

system.

4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system

structure.

3. The goals of the

system.

2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, structure,
rules, delays, parameters — arises.

1. The power to transcend

paradigms.

Reference: ‘’The twelve leverage points to intervene in a system were

proposed by the environmental scientist Donella Meadows’’

Life cycle
approaches
Green building takes a life-cycle approach, looking at the entire life of a project,
product, or service, rather than a single snapshot of a system. The dimension of
longevity distinguishes green building from conventional building practice, which
may fail to think across time, and helps create communities and buildings that are
meant to last.

For a building, a life-cycle approach begins with the initial predesign decisions that set
goals and a program to follow. It continues through location selection, then design,
construction, operations and maintenance, refurbishment, and renovation. A building’s
life-cycle ends in demolition or, preferably, reuse.

A comprehensive, life-cycle approach improves the ability to address potentially

important environmental and human health concerns. For example, a product may
consist of material mined in Africa, manufactured in Asia, and shipped to the United
States for purchase. By focusing only on the energy efficiency of this product during its
use, we might miss the damage caused by its transport from the place of manufacture
or by the extraction of its raw material. Or a window may have a high recycled content
but not be highly efficient. By looking only at the percentage of recycled content, we
might select a product that will compromise the project’s energy-saving goals.

In a green building project, the team must consider embodied energy—the total amount
of energy used to harvest or extract, manufacture, transport, install, and use a product
across its life- cycle—alongside performance and adaptability. The careful consideration
of all attributes may lead to the selection of products that did not at first appear to be the
most sustainable option.

Life cycle thinking (LCT) is about going beyond the traditional focus on production and
manufacturing process to include the triple bottom line components which are the
environmental, social and economic impacts of a product or material over its entire life
cycle.

The main goals of the LCT is to reduce a product’s resource use and emissions to the
environment and to improve the performance through its life cycle. It goes beyond the
narrow traditional focus on a final product and focuses on the entire life cycle that
begins with the extraction of raw materials from natural resources in the ground and
the energy generation. Materials and energy are then part of production, packaging,
distribution, use, maintenance, and eventually recycling, reuse, recovery or final
disposal into landfills.
Life cycle approach was made functional through Life Cycle Management (LCM)
which is a management approach that has a set of tools and techniques that aid in
assessing and analyzing the products and materials.

Life cycle assessment

(LCA)
Also, known as life cycle analysis and cradle to grave analysis. It’s a technique to
assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product’s life from
cradle to grave. Often designers use this technique to help in assessing the products
and evaluate environmental and sustainable potential impacts associated with
identified inputs and releases.

Phases of Life Cycle

Assessment

There are 4 components of life cycle assessment as per the ISO 14040 and
14044 standards which are as follows:

1. Goal and scope definition: Identifying the LCA’s purpose, the expected
outcomes of the study and the required level of detail.

2. Life Cycle Inventory (LCI): stages of production are analyzed for both
extractions and emissions. Quantifying energy and raw materials inputs and
environmental releases for each stage of production.

3. Life Cycle Impact assessment (LCA): evaluating the significance of potential

environmental impacts associated with energy and raw material inputs.

4. Interpretation: a systematic technique to identify, check and evaluate information

from LCA and LCI in which the results from LCA and LCI are summarized. The
outcome of the interpretation phase are recommendations and a conclusion that will
include; identification of significant issues based on the LCA and LCI results,
evaluation of the study and recommendations.

Life cycle costing analysis

(LCCA)

A method for assessing the cost-effective option among different alternatives. LCCA
is useful especially when project alternatives that fulfill the same performance
requirements, differ in initial and operational costs, a comparison should be done to
determine which option will maximize the net savings.
The most challenging aspect of an LCCA is to determine the economic effects of
alternative options of materials, products or building systems and to quantify these
effects and express them.

In green buildings, there are a lot of costs associated with acquiring, manufacturing,
operating, and disposing of a building, material, product or building system that are
usually fall into the following categories:

1. Initial costs: The capital investment costs associated with the product
purchase, acquisition, construction costs, and building equipment.

2. Operation and maintenance costs: based on the consumption of water, energy

and other utilities that operate in the building. It’s often hard to predict it in design or
planning phase, but assumptions must be made based on occupancy rates,
schedules and use profiles. There is also the replacement and repair costs for any
product that reaches its end life that requires changing.

3. Fuel costs: To provide electricity for the

buildings.

4. Disposal costs: at the end life of products and

materials.

5. Finance: it includes the finance charges, taxes, and any other associated
costs.

6. Non-Monetary Benefits or Costs: achieved with no objective way of assigning a

currency value like increased productivity from improving light quality.

In LEED, there is also 2 more terms that define the costs which are hard costs and
soft costs.

Hard Costs: the actual physical construction of a development that includes grading,
excavation of a site, the materials used, landscaping, and products.

Soft Costs: fees that are not physical, it includes architecture and engineering fees,
permits and taxes, LEED certification costs, and some maintenance and security
costs.

There are a lot of free to use calculators for LCA that is a quick and intuitive way for
designers and engineers to understand, analyze and compare environmental impacts
of products and design decisions.

Integrative
Process

Conventional building
process
Conventional building process is usually a linear process that relies on the structure
of the organization, project or chart with its limited abilities to hear opinions and take
decisions with other people who should be involved in taking the decisions.

It’s a constrained process that will progress as per the plan without any
consideration to the current or actual new findings that will arise during any phase
of the project.

The conventional process is always easier than any other method as it requires less
time. But with less time for coordination, opportunities for synergies are limited, the
team members always fail to achieve the targets in the planned time, emphasis on up-
front costs and also sometimes problems arise in the functional operations due to lack
of collaboration.

Conventional process is used widely but because of the problems that aroused, project
teams and organizations are switching to the Integrated Process through a whole
building design approach.

Whole Building Design

approach

Whole Building Design approach is a process that views the building as a system,
rather than a set of different and isolated components.

This approach allows full integration between project team members for better decision
making. It will also allow for better performance and less overall costs avoiding
mistakes that cause functional problems later on.
Project teams can find synergies and apply strategies that won’t be achieved
without a collaboration team work as in this process.

Whole Building Design generally means investing in design activities that increase the
opportunities for integrated works and sharing ideas, with an eye to better
performance and life cycle savings.

Whole Building Design is based upon these concepts of synergies and

interconnectedness and consists of two main components: an integrated design
approach and an integrated team process. The integrated design approach asks all the
stakeholders that are; project planners, project management, consultants, design, and
construction team to look at the project objectives, building materials, products, and
assemblies from many different perspectives. This approach is a deviation from the
conventional planning and design process of relying on the expertise of specialists who
work in their respective specialties somewhat isolated from each other to a more
synergetic collaborative approach.

USGBC through LEED rating system hopes to “promote integrated, whole-building

design practices.” using the integrated design approach, higher levels of creativity
will be achieved.

There are four main components of a successful whole building design

approach:

· Establishing a vision for the project and setting design performance

goals.

· Forming a strong, collaborative and integrated project

team.

· To understand the requirements and the outcome of each and every

phase.

· Realizing sustainable design within the established design

process.
Integrative
Process

An integrative process is a comprehensive approach to building systems and

equipment. The Integrated Process provides a means to explore, implement and
operate sustainable design and construction principles effectively on a project while
staying within budgetary and scheduling constraints. It relies upon a multi-disciplinary
and collaborative team whose members make decisions together based on a shared
vision and a holistic understanding of the project. It follows the design through the
entire project life, from pre-design through occupancy and into operation till it reaches
the demolition and end of building life.

The integrative process has two main components which are the integrative design
process (IDP) and integrated team process (Stakeholders). IDP is a term that is not
exclusively associated with high-performance building design; in principle, it is a flexible
approach that can be applied to almost any type of design or decision-making process.
The specific steps and strategies employed are directly related to the project’s design
intent, which not only differ between projects but also continually change as the
industry evolves.

REASONS FOR INTEGRATIVE

PROCESS

· High performance and sustainability expectations.

· Spreading awareness to building developers and designers about the
rapidly evolving market.

· Adaptability and flexibility during entire life-cycle.

· Increasing requirements caused by high complexity and to avoid discrepancies

of different trades.

· To avoid excessive costs from misleading isolated

decisions.
As a summary, Integrative Process can be
considered as:

• An iterative process, not a linear process that is considered as a flexible method,

not static or fixed;

• changing over time, not pre-determined;

and

• It has ongoing learning and new sustainable features, not a pre-ordained

sequence of steps.

Design Objectives of Integrative

Process:

There are a set of general design objectives and goals that should be considered to
achieve a high performance building in design and construction:

Accessibility and Security: How the occupants and visitors of the building will have
an ease of access to the building with the consideration of ADA principles and security
measures.

Economical: the ability to select the cost-effective material solutions that are
environmental and sustainable as per the preset budget of the project and also the
ability to perform Life Cost Analysis.

Operational: dedicated to the operations and maintenance period after occupancy in

which the building is performing as intended in the design and construction.

Preservation: When the building is located on a sensitive land, near of a flood plain
area, green fields, native plantation land or historical site, a preservation, conservation
or rehabilitation measures should be taken to ensure there isn’t any harms from the
building towards other built and unbuilt environment.
Productivity: it’s more related to occupant’s health and indoor wellness and ability to
perform under a better indoor environmental quality.
Sustainable: implementation of environmental strategies and measures in building
design and construction.

LEED rating system has created categories with credits that contain all the above
mentioned design objectives in a more detailed, goal-oriented and analyzed strategies
that awards points to projects when achieving a credit.

LEED rating system has identified 3 phases for integrative process

which are:

1. Discovery: it takes place in predesign phase in which the design team is becoming
familiar with integrative process and doing so is by reviewing ANSI consensus national
standard guide© for design and construction of sustainable buildings and communities,
which provides a step-by- step guidance and a methodology for improving building
design, construction and operations through a replicable, integrative process.

2. Implementation: which takes place in design and construction phases in which the
team with incorporate all of the collective understandings of system interactions that
were found during discovery phase.

3. Operations: the third phase which includes the operations, maintenance and
performance for ongoing operations and occupancy in which the team will measure
the performance to achieve targets and taking correction actions.

Integrated team members/

Stakeholders

In a general term, stockholder’s definition refers to a party that has an interest in a

project, organization or a process. Stakeholders’ term is used in green building as the
design of buildings requires the integration of many kinds of information into an
elegant, useful, and durable whole. An integrated design process includes the active
and continuing participation of users and community members, code officials, owner,
building technologists, environmental specialists, contractors, cost consultants, civil
engineers, MEP engineers, structural engineers, specifications specialists, and
consultants from many specialized fields. The best buildings result from continual,
organized collaboration among all players throughout the building's life cycle.

To achieve the best result, all parties must adhere to the following
principles:
· Clear and continuous communication channels and
meetings.

· Attention to detail and an eye for synergies

opportunities.

· Active collaboration among all stakeholders throughout all phases of the

project.

Charrette
s

A charrette is a kind of workshop that can be the power force that starts the
communication process among the project team members, it is important that all
relevant decision makers attend. In a charrette, project team should share their ideas
towards the project and start setting goals and targets to achieve. The successful
charrettes can transform a project from a static, complex problem to a successful,
buildable plan. Usually, it is an intensely focused, multi-day session that uses a
collaborative approach to create realistic and achievable design ideas.

The outcome also includes the identification of strategies and designs for the
project, shared information from expertise, and time frame for implementation.

The integrated Design Process through

phases

Phase 1 – Pre-
Design

The integrated design process differs from conventional design right from the
beginning of a project by the inclusion of a pre-design phase which is not part of the
normal conventional design process.

1. Process: The predesign phase is more about coordination and establishing

foundations. From early on, the team should include enough consultants to cover all
the needed expertise related to site, energy use, daylighting, etc.

Architects, along with Landscape, mechanical and electrical consultants should all be
included to explore every opportunity that might exist. A key person should be assigned
to coordinate the whole pre-design process that he will be responsible to facilitate the
charrettes, sharing he information, challenge the team to go beyond the norms, build a
shared vision with the team and finally to help the team prioritize the building’s
performance objectives.
Important meetings take place during pre-design phase, which set the foundation for
the next phases. Charrette is essential to take place during pre-design as it will
establish a shared vision and determine core objectives.

During this phase, a LEED score card should be filled, LEED score card is the
document in which the team will set the LEED goals as per credits they want to
achieve.

2.
Outputs:

a. Goals and
targets

b. Pre-design report that will

include:

1. Site analysis with the built environment

consideration.

2. Collected data from charrette and other

workshops.

3. Clear definitions of sustainable

strategies.

4. Clear responsibilities for all team

members.

c. Preliminary Budget
analysis

d. Communication
pathways

e. LEED Score card

initiation.

Phase 2 – Schematic
Design

It builds upon the vision developed in pre-design phase. Schematic design is where the
team starts to search for innovative solutions and technologies to implement. It also
allows experts from all disciplines to analyze the unique opportunities and constraints of
the building site and to collectively explore synergies between disciplines.

LEED score card to be updated as per the latest discussions the team will make.
LEED action plan also should be prepared to define the requirements of design
phase for design credits.

1. Process: the project facilitator continues to play his important role by leading the
charrettes and help the team members think outside of the box. A commissioning
authority should be
engaged towards the end of this phase as they will be responsible for reviewing
the final schematic concepts and options.

The project facilitator should also ensure the project vision is being implemented and
following the goals described in Pre-design phase.
2.
Outputs:

a. Refine the general goals and objectives developed during pre-design

phase.

b. Perform preliminary energy

analysis.

c. Perform financial analysis

d. Finalize the schematic design

report.

e. Refine the responsibilities and roles for the

team.

f. Updated LEED score card

Phase 3 – Design
Development

A greater detail is developed for all aspects of the building. Coordination is an ongoing
process as it continues to through this stage. The role of coordination meetings at this
stage is to deliver detailed drawings, discrepancies reports for different trades, decide
on final design options and to confirm the achievement of goals and targets set earlier.

At this stage, LEED score card for design credits should be final. Some LEED
credits also require plans and documentation that is recommended to be finalized
during this stage as it relates to design phase.

1. Process: The team should engage new specialists as per the new findings and
new requirements they face. Green strategies should be assessed and evaluated as
per earlier goals. Tools for simulation to be used at this stage to perform the energy
modeling, daylighting analysis, thermal comfort and acoustics as at this stage, the
design is almost complete and most of the technologies are already introduced.
2.
Outputs:
A. Design development report that includes the IDP issues and simulation
results.

B. Detailed financial report using Life-cycle

costing.

C. Specification related to the performance

criteria.

D. Preliminary commissioning
report.

E. LEED plans and requirements for design

credits.

F. Updated LEED score card with final design

credits.

G. Updates roles and

responsibilities.

Phase 4 – Construction and Contract

Documents

The development of Contract Documents involves translating the Design

Development information into formats suitable for pricing, permitting, and
construction.

1. Process: Each member of the team should be aware of his area of responsibility
and each one should review the construction documents to ensure design intents are
reflected in them. All the applicable codes and standards should be review to identify
requirements of local, provincial, or federal environmental regulations.

2.
Outputs:

A. Complete and accurate project

specifications.

B. Sustainability and specific LEED credit

requirements

C. Updated LEED score Card including targeted LEED

credits.

D. Term of responsibility for contractor and sub-

trades.

E. Complete tender
documents

F. Commissioning
Plan

G. Updated roles and

responsibilities

Phase 5 – Bidding, Construction, and

commissioning
In this Phase of the project, many factors must be considered to ensure that the
goals of the project are carried through to completion.

Qualified contractors are chosen, communication procedures are set in place, and the
expanded team works to transform the abstract into actuality.

By the end of this phase the team will have achieved a finished, fully functional,
and well- commissioned building, ready for occupancy.

1. Process: the contractor plays an important role at this phase as the key
person who is responsible for translating the design into reality.

Contractor will be responsible to submit the project schedule, LEED certification

submittals related to construction credits, and post-construction package with as-
built drawings.
2.
Outputs:

a. Record drawings.

b. Commissioning reports.

c. Operations and maintenance

manual

d. Final documentation for all LEED credits and

prerequisites.

Phase 6 – Building Operations (Start

Up)

This phase is dependent upon completion and documentation of the commissioning

that took place during construction.

1. Process: The commissioning agent will play the vital role here in this stage as a
follow-up commissioning should be performed, as well as measurement and
verification system of operations and energy and water consumption.

The commissioning agent and the owner must ensure that knowledge is transferred to
building occupants and operators, particularly the maintenance staff to ensure effective
use and operation of the building.
2.
Outputs:

a. Training and education

materials.

b. Measurement and verification

data.

c. Completed commissioning
documentation.
Phase 7 – Post Occupancy (Long-Term Building
Operations)

The integrative process seeks to enhance the entire life of the building through
effective maintenance and operation, measurement and verification, re-
commissioning, and building performance evaluation.

1. Process: the owner or facility manager will be the person-in-charge for the entire
post- occupancy phase in the project. Evaluating the building after construction is not a
standard practice, but when a building performance evaluation in undertaken, it is
typically directed by the building owner.

2.
Outputs:

a. Updated building
documentation

b. Building performance evaluation

results

c. Continuous monitoring

d. Re-commissioning plan

e. Environmental management
program

Conclusi
on

The best green buildings result from continual, organized collaboration among all
players throughout the building's life cycle through an integrative process and
integrative team that understand his roles and responsibilities during each stage
of the project.
In the upcoming chapters, we will investigate and understand the measures and
implementation strategies behind LEED rating system