During the Greenbuild 2024 Conference, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) launched the PERFORM program, a new initiative aimed at addressing the evolving challenges of the green building industry. In this article, we explore how the program works and why it marks a new reality for the sustainable building sector.
What is the PERFORM Program?
PERFORM is a data-driven framework created to address one of the critical gaps in sustainable construction – operational performance. The program shifts the emphasis to how buildings operate post-occupancy, ensuring they deliver on sustainability promises.
What sets the PERFORM program apart is its shift from static certification to dynamic performance verification. It focuses on ongoing building performance rather than just meeting design or construction benchmarks. Unlike traditional certification programs, PERFORM continuously monitors and optimizes key sustainability metrics.
How It Works
Two important features of the platform are its low entry barrier and flexible nature. There are no mandatory pre-defined performance limits, allowing participants to set their own realistic goals after registering their portfolio on the PERFORM platform.
The process is no longer linear; it’s a cycle, and this is how PERFORM works:
- Enrollment – Select performance criteria and set goals
- Monitoring – Track progress against the chosen criteria
- Verification – Submit data for third-party verification
- Improvement – Add new metrics or update targets as needed
At the same time, the program’s performance metrics and technical requirements align with established industry standards, such as those set by LEED. This alignment supports participants in pursuing certifications and ensures their portfolios are continuously improving on the path to achieving the highest sustainability outcomes. Thus, joining the program can be a great way to kickstart the journey toward LEED Operations and Maintenance (O+M) certification.
Key Metrics
The key PERFORM performance metrics are grouped into 8 main categories, each focusing on different aspects of building sustainability and operational efficiency. These metrics provide a comprehensive framework for assessing how buildings perform across environmental, social, and health-related dimensions:
- Emissions (total GHG emissions, GHG emissions intensity)
- Energy (total energy use, energy use intensity, renewable energy use)
- Water (total water emissions, water use intensity)
- Waste (total waste diversion)
- Health (occupant satisfaction survey, indoor air quality monitoring, indoor air quality testing, worker health and safety plan)
- Resilience (physical climate risk screening, physical climate risk assessment, climate transition risk assessment, operational planning for resilience)
- Biodiversity (protected and restored biodiverse habitat)
- Social Impact (social and community impact assessment, area designated for community, use community investment)
The system evaluates building performance by measuring absolute performance and change in performance from a baseline year. Absolute performance tracks the current value of a metric at any given point in time. Meanwhile, performance change is assessed by comparing current data to a baseline year—a 12-month period used to track changes in performance over time.
The Role of Ongoing Monitoring
Real-time monitoring is the pulse of the recent transformations in the green building movement, with LEED v5 and the PERFORM program serving as prime examples of this shift. The bridge from monitoring to PERFORM is the Arc system. It is directly connected to PERFORM through its comprehensive building performance tracking features.
Arc provides the platform where building performance data is visualized, analyzed, and reported. This helps teams align their buildings with the performance criteria set at the PERFORM platform. Here’s how the connection works:
- Data Integration: Arc integrates real-time data from various monitoring systems and makes it accessible on a single platform.
- Real-Time Tracking: Arc’s capabilities allow for continuous monitoring, meaning teams can stay up-to-date with the building’s performance against targets set.
- Visualization and Reporting: The reporting tools enable teams to visualize performance data and compare it against the established targets of the PERFORM program. This makes it easier to evaluate whether a building is meeting its sustainability objectives or if improvements are needed.
For years, we’ve been capturing real-time data on energy, gas, water use, indoor air quality (IAQ), and lighting through our own monitoring system, BEE Sense which is fully integrated with Arc and ready to support the PERFORM program. This system has already enabled us to witness remarkable improvements across projects of varying sizes and typologies, saving resources and money for building owners.
