by Brianna Crandall — January 16, 2017 — Last week, the National Institute of Building Sciences officially launched its newly redesigned free Web portal for the WBDG: Whole Building Design Guide.
Used by millions of building professionals each year, the Whole Building Design Guide contains design, construction and facilities management information and criteria required by U.S. military and other federal agencies, along with substantial content on topics of interest to all building professionals.
Following a year-long effort, the WBDG now offers:
- Expanded search and browsing capabilities to narrow results
- A restructured site menu to improve access to desired information
- Bookmarking capability for account holders
- Faster loading and increased performance
- A responsive template for viewing on any device
- Improved readability and graphics
- Increased security
The WBDG design team also replaced the Construction Criteria Base, the building industry’s oldest continuously operating electronic information system (which has run since 1987), with the newly structured Federal Facility Criteria library. The new library reorganizes documents by government agency and document type while expanding the collection with new criteria from additional agencies. With this upgrade, WBDG account holders are able to subscribe to either a specific document or document type to receive e-mail notifications when it gets updated.
A new continuing education platform on the WBDG offers students the ability to browse courses by topic and offers a more robust user experience. The WBDG has added several new course selections, and students are now able to retake courses every two years.
The Whole Building Design Guide and an explanation of updates are available on the NIBS Web site.
