Adding value: Holistic thinking and practical solutions

We approach our consulting assignments with the belief that, using the right frame conditions, the built environment can restore ecological health, increase productivity, reduce operating expenses and enhance customer and community well-being, all while balancing the realities of capital investment and operating costs.

Combining our unique capacity for systems thinking with the latest research, we work with designers and owners to develop specific, holistic and practical solutions to challenges faced at all stages of project development, from pre-design to post-occupancy. We help focus resources on the things that matter most and ensure that every action is socially, ecologically and economically beneficial.

Our consulting services are tailored to individual clients but have included:

• Performance Analysis and Peer Review: With a network of close collaborators, we provide a range of performance studies with an emphasis on clearly communicating design implications—what to do to with the data to make designs more effective in reaching project goals.
• Project Benchmarking and Design Frameworks: Our detailed frameworks help designers evaluate their work against project goals, sustainability benchmarks and green standards such as LEED®, BREEAM and the Living Building Challenge.
• Existing Facility Auditing: We provide reviews of existing facilities and identify opportunities for energy, water and materials optimization, increased occupant health and well-being, and ecosystem regeneration.
• Pre-Design Research + Feasibility Studies: We help identify the right technologies and approaches given a specific program and location, enabling teams to progress quickly with high-performance designs once financing and approvals are in place.
• Materials Assessments: We analyze the environmental impacts of material choices at the earliest stages of design, assist designers in selecting the right products during design development, and help evaluate products submitted as alternates or substitutions during construction, all through a Cradle to Cradle lens.
• Guidelines: We provide guidelines that put Cradle to Cradle principles into action, over time and across typologies, within the framework of client values.
• Education and Workshops: We offer workshops that educate clients on Cradle to Cradle concepts in the built environment and help them to define sustainability as it relates to their own corporate, institutional or individual values.