Overview
An interdisciplinary team of local and national experts has developed sustainable building guidelines for the State of Minnesota Departments of Administration and Commerce that will be used on all new state buildings. This is Version 1.1 of The State of Minnesota Sustainable Building Guidelines. It will be tested during 2004-5 and subsequent revisions will be published on at least an annual basis.
The guidelines are a part of the Buildings, Benchmarks & Beyond (B3) Project consisting of three components. Project management and delivery is led by LHB, Inc.; the guideline development process is led by the Center for Sustainable Building Research (CSBR); and public building benchmarking is led by The Weidt Group. The management component of the B3 project facilitates integration of the guideline and benchmarking efforts, and coordinates public input. The guidelines component is described above and is the subject of this document. Benchmarking will identify the energy performance of existing public buildings in order to direct energy conservation improvements where they are most needed and most cost-beneficial. As new state-funded projects are constructed and operated in accordance with the new sustainable guidelines, more detailed information on energy and other sustainable performance factors will also be tracked.