At RBGB, our mission is to help project teams create energy efficient, sustainable, high performance green buildings and maintain that high performance over the life of the building. We have a large bank of experience, technical tools, and green building know-how that we tap into for all projects. These pages are the beginnings of a collection of thoughts, tips, concepts and instructions that deal with specific green building issues to help create a greater level of knowledge within the community.
ASHRAE’s Certified Building Commissioning Professional (BCxP Certification) is awarded to individuals who pass stringent testing to validate their competency to lead, plan, coordinate and manage a team to implement commissioning processes in new and existing buildings.
Continue ReadingJeff Ross-Bain, P.E., LEED Fellow, WELL AP, President of RBGB, is presenting an educational session on Advanced High-Performance Building Design at the 2023 ASHRAE Winter Conference on Saturday, February 4 from 8 AM–11 AM at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.
Continue ReadingRBGB is excited to have two of our projects highlighted at the upcoming GreenBuild Conference in Atlanta. Both the World of Coca-Cola Museum (LEED Gold) and the Trees Atlanta Kendeda Headquarters (LEED Platinum) buildings will be scheduled tours at the conference and are sure to be sell out events.
Continue ReadingOn January 1st, 2019, RBGB turned ten. Although we started, technically, at the lowest valley of the recession, we survived and learned a lot about operations and customer care. One interesting observation is that, whether a downturn or boom time, people are always interested in saving money! We are excited about the prospects and the ten-year anniversary has triggered reflection regarding where we go next and what the next ten years may bring.
Continue ReadingIn December 2016, Jeff received a Master’s degree from Georgia Tech in Facility Management. What prompted this move (besides a six-minute bike ride to campus) was the culmination of years of conducting energy audits and building condition assessments. The realization that emerged from that work was that, for many buildings, replacing equipment, or upgrading systems, was not the solution when an underlying lack of professional facility management practices was present.
Continue ReadingWe are very excited to start operations in the Charleston area. As Jeff’s wife, Teresa, is a born and bred Charlestonian, he has spent a lot of time in the area and has made many contacts and friends. Charleston is a beautiful town that has a growing green building mindset, especially as the area grows and becomes more popular. RBGB will be offering all the services we currently offer and will also look to bring sustainable facility management to the Low Country.
Continue ReadingThe United States Green Building Council (USGBC) develops and administers the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system. LEED is a voluntary point based system that covers five main areas of sustainable design including site, water, energy, materials, and indoor environmental quality. Based on the total number of points achieved, various levels of certification are awarded and these levels are: Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum.
Continue ReadingAn underlying goal behind advancements in the building energy sectors, including standards organizations, high performance building design guides, various green building rating systems, and initiatives such as Architecture 2030 is to steadily improve energy performance through technology development and application to the point where Net Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) will be a practical reality in the years to come.
Continue ReadingCommon to many LEED projects is to produce an energy model on a completed design for the sole purpose of estimating points. This is the “how lucky did we get” approach. Thus, the energy model tool is not fully utilized, the modeling costs become an overhead, and opportunities for performance improvements are lost. It is under this scenario that the energy model gets labeled as having no value.
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