For a builder or designer, it is essential to employ software programs to aid in their work. These programs range in purpose from modeling a building to energy analysis, and many of them require degrees in building science or equivalent experience. It’s no question that we will become more dependent on them as they continue to evolve and add new features. One aspect that will change is accessibility, providing the chance for virtually anyone to design, model, and measure a building such as their home, business, or school in terms of energy efficiency and material use.

Whether you are a seasoned professional looking for information on the latest and greatest, or an interested business owner or student, you will find a program to suit your needs. Since October focused on Remodels and Retrofits, we decided to take a look at a few software solutions and provide an overview for the community.

Energy Dashboards for Occupant Engagement
One company leading the way in the accessibility space is Lucid Design Group and their Building Dashboard technology. With this software, building occupants receive real-time updates on energy and water use within their building, displayed in an easy to understand web interface. The thought behind this is that occupants will change their habits and lower their consumption if they are presented with real-time data.

Working with colleges and universities, Lucid’s goal is to create communities centered on resource conservation, and encourage social networks in which these communities can share their findings. Elon University in particular employs the Building Dashboard to provide real-time information on the performance of all their buildings, contributing to a campus-wide sustainability initiative. The flexibility of the interface combined with the quality of information allows many parties within the school to understand and explain campus-wide utility usage.

You don’t have to be an experienced facility manager to understand that your office or classroom can benefit from efficiency measures. While Lucid’s offering isn’t the only program designed to provide this type of information, it does stand out in terms of its usability and information display.

Roof Asset Management
When planning for a retrofit or remodel, it is very important to assess the situation of your roof. While this seems straightforward, many projects neglect this leading to an expensive roof replacement that could have been pushed back several more years. It’s easy in a retrofit to shoot for solar panels on a flat roof, or even reach for a vegetated system, but these can be very expensive! Enter strategies for roof asset management, which can help prioritize energy efficiency upgrades and put your project on track for balanced spending.

Digital Facilities Corporation has several programs to help provide building managers and owners with good information enabling better management. RoofPro, their leading program, provides tools for data analysis, user management, custom reporting, and aids in comprehensive roofing inspections. If you have fewer than 250 roofing sections however, you may want to look into SiteManager. It contains similar functionality and is lower in cost with monthly subscription options. From there it’s easy to step up to RoofPro, particularly if you are deciding to roll it out to a larger project.

Home Performance Audit/Energy Modeling
So far we’ve focused on solutions beneficial to the architect, designer, and building owner or manager. This next solution taps into the building performance arena and is made for contractors and energy auditors. TREAT, or Targeted Retrofit Energy Analysis Tool, comes to us from PSD Consulting, and was designed to provide support in the form of an energy analysis tool.

One of the greatest parts about this tool is that it includes room-by-room heat loss analysis with an hourly energy model, providing a very robust performance tool. We also like the fact that the Department of Energy has backed it for use in Weatherization Assistant Programs, and expect to see it in use for a long time. In speaking to local contractors in our area, TREAT is high on the list of potential software solutions. It’s important to choose a product that will not only be robust enough for the kind of work your firm may be doing, but also one that provides good data on ROI for the customer. TREAT provides these, and includes separate versions for single or multifamily projects.

Combining Building Design and Energy Analysis
Autodesk, a name many are familiar with, has recently introduced some changes to its software offering. I was surprised the other day to learn that they have taken their newest offering, Revit Conceptual Energy Analysis, and integrated its features into Revit Architecture and Revit MEP. It’s time to take a look specifically at the design side of green building and how this company has broadened the use of its software.

If you’ve always wanted to run energy analysis of your project from within the same program you built the model with, now is the time. What the company did, among many other tasks, was incorporate the features of Autodesk Image Modeler to help create a 3D wireframe from photos taken by a Facility Manager or Engineer. Now you can take photos of your existing building, upload them into the software, have it create the model for you, and then run a whole building energy analysis with the features of Revit Conceptual Energy Analysis. Accessibility, one thing we mentioned at the beginning, is truly being introduced here, as more people will have access to the program. Many of these features are now automated, and the software will guide you through the whole process. We expect this to take off more once firms and businesses take up the new version, which is available to anyone currently under subscription.

While this is just a fraction of the number of programs out there in use today, it does highlight some great offerings and hopeful newcomers. As the field of sustainable design and construction matures and gains wider standardization, the software enabling a lot of that work can only get better. Keep an eye out on these programs, whether you are currently using them or only casually interested. As a component of the future of our built environment, software will continually prove itself as a valuable part of your team.

What programs do you use in your work? Share your insight with us in the comments.

About the Editor
Mitchell Funk is an Editorial Assistant for Green Building Pro. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara and is a LEED Green Associate.