SO YOU HAVE AN IDEA OF HOW you want to improve an existing building, and you have found the people in your organization who will support that mission. Now what? How do you get approval of your ideas to make them a reality? Building your case through an evidence-based approach to the project will show your team an integrated path to making your old building perform like a new one. Try to keep a couple of things in mind. First, the potential value from improving an existing building is far-reaching, and, second, you are not alone in your search for solutions.

If "something needs to change" resonates with you, then you probably need to read this book now. You will see that it is possible today to make old buildings perform like new ones without paying a premium in construction costs. The primary enablers are modern building science, sophisticated data analytics, and the harnessing of a vast offering of Internet-of-Things (IoT) capabilities using a simple and elegant methodology. Our thesis that an existing building is the greenest building stands in contrast with the notion that the greenest building is the brand-new, highest-scoring, LEED-Platinum award winner with visible solar panels on the roof, or a living building, or one that has a perfect bioswale next to multiple forms of transit. We are redefining "green" and what it means to existing buildings around the world.

WE ENVISION A FUTURE IN WHICH society will routinely consider restoring existing buildings to the performance standards of new ones—whether an existing building is abandoned and forgotten or outdated and underperforming. We hope that, over time, it becomes socially and financially unacceptable—even unfashionable—to build a new building when there is an existing building perfectly suited for restoration in the same neighborhood. The pace at which we achieve this aspiration depends on the urgency we show to expand design imperatives beyond mechanical system components to include envelope system components. The quality and performance characteristics of a building are fundamentally defined by the quality and performance characteristics of the building envelope, which is often overlooked by the design teams on existing-building projects.

In this book the authors explain how to realize the potential of existing buildings and make them perform like new. This book will challenge you to rethink spaces where people work and play, while determining how existing buildings can save the world.

THIS BOOK WAS DESIGNED TO accomplish one goal: prove to building owners of existing buildings that it is possible not only to make old buildings perform like new ones but also to do that without paying much, if any, premium in construction costs. The primary benefits of accomplishing that goal are obvious: a dramatic reduction of energy consumption and a dramatic improvement of indoor environmental quality. But we haven't yet told you the rest of the story. We haven't shared with you how the choices that building owners make every day have lasting consequences and contribute to either extending the life of this planet or to destroying life on this planet. At this point in world history, every building owner has an opportunity to put their fingerprint on the future of our world.

Most People Aspire To Do the right thing. After working in and around the construction industry for the last thirty years, we can state emphatically that the vast majority of project team members are looking to contribute their expertise to create the best buildings possible. Building owners, given the choice, want the best buildings that money can buy. Yet the industry struggles to understand how best to scale high-performance buildings and where to start. The decisions building owners make that seem best in the short-term show that they rarely consider how to allocate scarce resources over longer periods of time. This misalignment creeps in when stakeholders, who typically operate as cost centers, do not trust new entrants into the decision-making process. Instead, they look only at first costs, fail to utilize data analytics to understand energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality, and miss the long-term cost savings of an integrated approach.

IN MOST CASES, THE EASIEST PART of the process of transforming an existing building is to find all the ways the building is performing below expectations. Whether it's because of inefficient use of energy or poor indoor environmental quality, buildings built even just ten years ago are underperforming and failing to meet modern occupant expectations. To begin laying out the business case for renovation, it's important to consider all the areas of occupant dissatisfaction. Building managers might consider a subjective survey of building occupants, as described in chapter 2, or they might establish a building-improvement team to be responsible for developing areas of potential improvement. Either way, the objective is to develop a prioritized list of improvements that would be most transformative if executed.

MANY PEOPLE THINK ZERO-ENERGY goals for new buildings are cost-prohibitive. We will show you that Zero-Energy goals can be achieved within a reasonable budget for new buildings and they are also possible when restoring and renovating existing buildings. To accomplish these goals within a reasonable budget, all that is required is to create a project design and develop construction processes that are guided by technology with a firm commitment to building science. Technology and building science give owners the basis from which to make data-driven decisions. What is behind Zero-Energy is the knowledge that it’s possible for existing buildings to be self-sufficient. To reach self-sufficiency, the industry is transitioning to low-carbon expectations, which requires energy-efficient solutions for the existing building stock as well as for all new buildings. To this end, we know that “it takes between ten and eighty years for a new building that is 30 percent more efficient than an average-performing existing building to overcome, through efficient operations, the negative climate-change impacts related to the construction process.

CARL ELEFANTE WROTE THESE WORDS over a decade ago when he was the director of sustainable design at Quinn Evans Architects in Washington, DC. He knew then that no amount of new green construction will get us where we need to go if we ignore existing buildings, adding that "four out of every five existing buildings will be renovated over the next generation while two new buildings are added."1