Sustainable Checklist for Senior Living
There are numerous Green Metrics, sustainable guidelines that can be used as a design tool or for actual third party verification, on the market these days. Despite all these efforts such as LEED, Green Guidelines for Healthcare and Global Green, the Senior Living arena seems to have been left out of the mix. The attached document is the beginning of what we at THW see as a promising way to integrate sustainable strategies into all of our projects. The Sustainable Checklist is the culmination of green credits/strategies derived from a review of the afore mentioned green metrics and proper citation of those metrics is warranted as this checklist is based on all the hard work and research of those parties that have created them – only to have been rearranged in a manner that we feel is best suited for the senior living market. The Checklist has been arranged in seven basic categories of Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy & Atmosphere, Materials & Resources, Indoor Environmental Quality, Integrated Design & Operation and Innovation. If you are familiar with any of the more prominent green metrics, these categories will look familiar – however we have taken this outline and gone one step further with the inclusion of three different levels of commitment. The Three Levels of Commitment are: Strategies for Standard Practice – those strategies that will be implemented on all projects no matter what, Strategies to be Considered – those strategies that would be addressed should a project choose to be green, an energy efficient environmentally conscious project, but do not want to go to the edge and still afford many choices of what strategies to employ, and finally Strategies for Ultimate Green – those strategies that would create a project that is worthy of merit as a truly sustainable project that is a product of the latest strategies and technologies a showcase of green design. Any project can choose which level to pursue depending on how “green’ the project wants to be or if there is a particular area of concern that area can have a concentration of effort as opposed to another area that may not be as big a concern. This extra level of breakdown allows for greater flexibility within the application of the Sustainable Checklist.
This document is intended to be a living document and offered for review and comment. There is on going research being conducted to investigate the validity and application of these strategies as they apply to senior living as a project type. Please see other entries within this blog for further information on that research or you can contact me and I will assist in any way I can.
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