TZL 1311

BUSINESS NEWS BRE GLOBAL LAUNCHES BREEAM NEW CONSTRUCTION FOR THE USA Following a consultation process and collaboration with global design, architecture, engineering, and planning firm HOK , BRE Global, the world’s leading building science center, announced adaptations of the BREEAM International New Construction standard to streamline the pathway to certification for projects located in the United States. The announcement is the result of a nearly year- long partnership to Americanize the BREEAM International New Construction standard and marks the latest development in BRE Global’s effort to expand in the U.S. market. Earlier this month, BRE Global announced the planned update to the BREEAM In-Use standard to include, for the first time, the assessment and

certification of sustainability performance for existing residential and multifamily buildings in the U.S. The newly unveiled adaptations for the BREEAM International New Construction standard include a regional approach that accounts for varying building codes, best practices and industry standards across the US. These changes ensure that BREEAM delivers the most appropriate sustainable solutions for each project in an efficient way, thereby delivering the maximum value. BREEAM New Construction also includes an option to work with non-standard buildings through the BREEAM Bespoke process, driving more sustainable outcomes for buildings with uncommon space types or in unusual locations.

Shamir Ghumra, Director of BREEAM at BRE Global said: “The adoption of BREEAM International by HOK marks another significant step forward for BREEAM. This will give more built environment stakeholders even more access to BREEAM in the USA; building on our growing number of customers for BREEAM In-Use. HOK have shown great leadership in taking forward BREEAM International.” BREEAM was developed in 1990 by BRE Global, the world’s leading multidisciplinary building science organization. With more than 2 million registered projects and more than 567,000 certified buildings in 81 countries, it has more certifications than any other green building rating system in the world.

ANDY KNAUF, from page 11

Unlike the other solutions we evaluated, there were no up- front capital expenses, and there was no infrastructure to maintain. Our employees can be creative and productive from anywhere. We can hire people based on talent, expertise, and skill without being limited by their geographic location. If Mead & Hunt opens a new branch office, our use of cloud workstations allows us to do it faster and at a significantly lower cost than before. End result? Through our adoption of a cloud-native approach, we have been able to keep up with our ambitious growth goals. My IT team is happy, the design engineers are happy, and we get a consistent cost every month. Our IT costs remain stable even as we are growing at least 15 percent per year. Our network is better protected, and we’ve been able to improve our disaster preparedness. Additional workstations are ready to be activated in an alternate Azure region in the (unlikely) event of an Azure outage, providing peace of mind and protecting productivity. “We needed to identify and implement a solution that met our company’s extensive and evolving needs. The task seemed daunting, but by breaking it into smaller steps, we were able to succeed.” My team and I are excited to find that next innovation that will give us the edge we need to continue to grow. Does this solution make sense for every firm? Definitely not. However, I believe it could become more common in the future and adopting this approach could eventually help with external collaboration with teaming partners and clients. We live in an exciting time – technology continues to develop ways for us to get more done faster. I look forward to seeing where it takes us in the future. As CIO/Vice President, ANDY KNAUF securely connects Mead & Hunt professionals with clients and each other. As head of the Information Technology Department, he stays on top of the latest technologies, overseeing IT-related purchasing, anticipating future network needs and security, and identifying proactive solutions. Contact him at andy.knauf@ meadhunt.com.

workstations were just not cutting it. We knew we needed to completely overhaul our IT infrastructure. ❚ ❚ Be adaptable if a solution doesn’t pan out. The first solu- tion we tried was on-premises virtual desktop infrastructure. VDI is technology that hosts a desktop operating system on a centralized server. Hosting the VDI on-premises required massive capital expenditures just to get the first workstation up and running, and the ongoing maintenance needed a lot of IT resources. After a month in production, I received feedback that user productivity had dropped 15 percent – exactly the opposite of what we were trying to achieve. We needed a new approach. ❚ ❚ Explore a different approach. After much trial and error, we found a solution called Workspot that used a different ap- proach: cloud-native Desktop-as-a-Service. DaaS is a form of VDI which is outsourced and handled by a third party, so it is supplied complete and ready to operate. This solution would not work for every firm, but it worked for our needs: with many small offices and field work, this solution fits our niche need to produce high-level work from anywhere. With a cloud-native DaaS approach, we can run high-perfor- mance workstations in regions across the nation, and easily deploy new cloud workstations around the world. This allows us to be extremely agile – we can get a new office up and running within minutes. This also means that we are more prepared in terms of disaster recovery: if an office were to burn down, we could be back online within five minutes, thus saving valuable time and money. Finally, the solution was re- ally a no-brainer when it comes to cost. After crunching the numbers, it was shown that implementing cloud workstations would save our firm $42,000 over five years. Sold! Now, we were ready to put it to a performance test. ❚ ❚ Test it out! We launched a pilot of Workspot Workstation Cloud on Microsoft Azure, which is a Microsoft service creat- ed for building and testing applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers. This was up and running in just a few days. We were surprised but happy to find that the cloud workstations performed the same or better than our high-end physical workstations. There could be absolutely no compromises on performance for our power users, and Workspot passed the crucial test in providing a great experi- ence for them.

THE ZWEIG LETTER September 9, 2019, ISSUE 1311

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