by Shane Henson — January 27, 2014—GreenCE, an online resource for design professionals wanting to learn about green building and sustainability, recently announced that it is teaming up with GreenWizard to facilitate increased communication between sustainable design professionals and product manufacturers.
GreenWizard is a provider of materials management for building product data and documentation for green building and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) projects. This alliance will help design professionals and other specificers find sustainable products and benefit building product manufacturers through increased access to the design community, GreenCE says.
As Brad Blank, vice president of GreenCE, explains, product transparency is crucial for architects to specify the healthiest products for a building. GreenWizard is a powerful tool that allows design teams to search for products that have a Health Product Declaration (HPD) and Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). GreenCE wants to encourage building product manufacturers to develop HPDs and EPDs, and upload their product declarations to GreenWizard.
According to GreenCE, HPDs and EPDs also play a significant role in the new LEED v4 green building rating system. Building product manufacturers have several new opportunities to get specified by contributing more points on projects under LEED v4. GreenCE helps building product manufacturers develop HPDs and EPDs. GreenWizard incorporates HPDs and EPDs into its Product Management Workflow tool and offers a single platform for sustainable materials selection. GreenCE and GreenWizard will work together to advance product transparency in the marketplace through education courses and instructional videos.
“GreenCE is an asset to the green building industry overall. We are excited about our new relationship and look forward to paving the educational path for the product transparency movement,” said Jerry Lepore, president/COO of GreenWizard. “Transparency is a crucial part of green building and GreenCE plays a significant educational role in the industry. Together, GreenCE and GreenWizard can provide architects with the information needed to select the healthiest products for their green building projects and enable manufacturers to disclose their product information through HPDs, EPDs and other third-party certifications.”
