Proceedings of: Workshop on Improving Building Design for Persons with Low Vision

Large show of interest

Comment by Fred Krimgold: What I was thinking about – what we talked about briefly yesterday at dinner – was the possibility of, right now, from this meeting, identifying people who would be interested in developing a longer-term collaboration for the development of specific research projects that would bring together the talents in the room here. And maybe NIBS could provide a kind of center point for coordinating that activity in the near future.

It was very encouraging to hear that NIH has a serious interest in this area and that apparently the program we heard about yesterday is not the only opportunity. But if we could, leaving here today, have a list of the interested parties and their contact information and a way of pushing this proposal idea – concrete proposal idea forward, that we could do that refinement over the Internet and really come to some specific action in the near term that would not preclude the kind of activity you’re talking about as immediately relevant, but would actually initiate the second track that I mentioned.

Okay, let me – do you want to ask for who would like to be involved in developing a proposal?

Response by Fred Krimgold: Yes, who would be interested in that discussion? Now, a number of issues have been raised. I have a sense that it has been raised.

Keep them up because I’m presuming that Fred would like to sort of honcho that effort.

Response by Fred Krimgold: I’ll share the honcho.

I’m not saying honcho; just kind of, you know. Just keep your hands up, just so she doesn’t – and we’ll send it out to everybody if you decide –

Response by Fred Krimgold: Actually, let me do it the other way. Who doesn’t want to?

NIBS can serve as a forum

All right. Stephanie will send it out and ask you to comment back. And then, I would think, Fred, you might want to put together a small group, identify some topics, and then send that out [to] get a consensus of which project we should go over and go after. And NIBS would be glad to sort of act as that forum.

Response by Fred Krimgold: Excellent.

That would allow federal dollars to transfer. Many of you don’t even know who we are. We’re private, a 501(c)(3), but we actually were established by Congress, so we have enabling legislation that does two really interesting things. This is all building-related. One is it allows the federal agencies to fund my services, my contracts to do certain things – develop criteria and do research, information dissemination, without going through federal procurement requirements, okay? So they don’t have to go out and competitive bid, in essence.

So they can come to us directly if they have a problem and fund us. We have a fairly small staff of about 20, 25 and we go out and contract with experts that basically do the work. The second piece which agencies find interesting is the legislation encourages federal agencies to use the recommendations and criteria that come out of the institute. It doesn’t say we have to. So it’s not like the federal standards we’re already using, but it says if something comes out in the [form of guidelines or standards], because NIBS is an open, unbiased, no specific constituency, then the agencies are encouraged to use it. So that’s two very beneficial attributes. And we have significant contracts with almost all of the agencies – GSA and military, VA, DOE, DHS that have to deal with buildings.

Are low energy consumption and high lighting quality compatible goals?

Comment by [Participant]: One research area or group we may need to bring [on board] are people who are on the energy side, because they’re the ones we’re arm wrestling over some of these issues. So where have they overstepped and where can they give in order to help us on several topics? So we’re going to need some interaction with your people who are –

Now, yeah, just one small thing [that] keeps coming up. In fact, Susan mentioned it in passing when she [referred to] the energy bill [and indicated that] it [excluded] accessibility. It does and it doesn’t. People list this.

The EISA legislation of 2007 – the Energy Independence and Security Act, which is the last energy law that we have on the books – defines high-performance buildings – there’s a whole section in there on high-performance buildings – defines high-performance buildings as allinclusive, comprehensive, and in fact mentions things like energy sustainability, security, safety, cost-effective, but it specifically doesn’t mention accessibility only because of some conflict it was in, in Congress at the time, but it does say it should be all-comprehensive, allinclusive and comprehensive.

And if you go to the criteria – or you go to the website that most federal agencies use to distribute their criteria, which is The Whole Building Design Guide, which is a website out of the institute [NIBS], whole building design is defined including accessibility as a major component of that. So --

Comment by Marsha Mazz: And accessibility is a component of sustainability.

Yeah. So it’s in there although the word [accessibility] was not in the definition. Now, most agencies, because of the push towards zero net energy, have excluded all that. I mean, they just focused on green. And, you know, we’re constantly up on the Hill, testifying that the agency shouldn’t forget all of the other things, including functionality, operations and maintenance, accessibility and safety, and all of the other issues; and not just focus on sustainability at this point.

Comment by Kurt Knight: But it is a fact that if solutions are going to be identified in research, they need to recognize that it’s not going to be very appropriate, or you’re going to have a hard sell, if you’re going to double the energy for lighting or something in a building. You have to look for solutions that help the issue but also the energy conservation.

Well, that’s just a game we play in this city. We’ve got a project with the Department of Homeland Security who is interested – all agencies have stovepipes. DHS is interested in glass and chem bio. Okay, that’s what they like. And I’d love to get them in a room with Susan to discuss this.

They’ve recognized they want to develop new glass, new envelope systems that have a higher degree of glass protection, but at least they’ve recognized they’re not going to do that unless those systems are energy conserving and [are from] sustainable materials. So you know, they’ve folded that all in, so everybody has sort of got to ride that horse right now because that’s the horse to ride.

Comment by Kurt Knight: And it’s not just the [energy consumption]. Reality is energy [cost] is going to increase significantly. Ten years from now we’re going to pay a lot more money for energy than we do now, and it’s a major issue for the whole country.

And so, whether you’re private or public sector in that high-performance building group, some companies are thinking about times when they can’t get energy, and how do they continue their operations in that kind of scenario? So [the] energy [issue] is not going to go away; it’s going to get worse or more difficult all the time.

Response by Mary Ann Hay: I don’t think we’re talking about doubling the energy for lighting. I think even if we could have a time-out on the energy-code reductions with lighting it would help tremendously, because what happens is it’s just across-theboard cuts that keep pushing it down further.

And one of the biggest challenges with the energy code is it doesn’t take into account the three-dimensional qualities of the space. So it just looks at the wattage per square foot [of floor area], and that wattage per square foot is the same whether you have an eight-foot ceiling or you have a 20-foot ceiling.

So I think there needs to be a serious look at the energy codes and stopping this drive to just keep reducing and maybe focus on other areas of the built environment where there can be significant energy reductions. But, I mean, for an office environment, one watt a square foot, that’s very difficult to provide a quality illuminated environment that addresses low-vision issues, provides appropriate glare control, provides vertical illumination. You know, there’s a lot of difficulties with that. So to say you have to cut this 30 percent, it’s not going to happen. We’re going to have very low light levels, and the technology, it’s not keeping up with it.

Comment by [Participant]: I think the challenge for us is to take those limitations, though, and find other ways to respond.

Response by [Participant]: Yeah, but if you get pigeonholed into this box, you don’t have enough energy, you can’t meet the minimum lighting codes.

Comment by [Participant]: I think one of the hopes is that we would create the impetus to create better technologies to address these issues, to actually harvest energy that’s free and therefore offset the energy use in buildings. Is that realistic in the next 10 years? It’s hard to say, but if we use more energy to light buildings, then we’re going to have to harvest more energy for those buildings.

Comment by Jim Woods: As part of the research, I would like to attack the myth that lighting is going to cause more [whole building] energy consumption. When we do actual measurements of energy consumption in a building, there has been no change in 30 years against the CBECS database.