Simon McGuinness asked me to speak about LEED with his Architectural Technology class.

65% of Ireland’s architects are unemployed today.  Shocking.  And sad.

Today, I got to speak to a room-full of these architects and architectural technologists.  They come to DIT once a week — from all over Ireland — to learn about sustainability.

To be eligible to take this course, a person has to be receiving some form of unemployment assistance.  The government funds this program as a way to infuse knowledge about green building into the community and help re-train this group so they can help address pressing social needs.

And what a fantastic audience!  I was so caught up in the dialogue that I forgot to take a picture for you.  I believe everyone in the room was older than me and likely had much more field experience.

And they were fully engaged, interested, and attentive!  Full of energy and questions!

The teacher of the course, Simon McGuinness, had asked me talk about the nuts and bolts of documenting projects using the LEED Green Building rating system.  That can be a very dry subject.  But they took it in with enthusiasm.

During the one-hour talk, I got the chance to share some of the findings of my dissertation and the recommendations I made in the article I just published in Planning for Higher Education.  I’ve included a gallery of those slides, below.  Please see the article for details.  (It got over 800 downloads!)

I described the system and how universities and K-12 schools use it.

I got to share recommendations from the paper I just published in Planning for Higher Education….

…these are conclusions I drew from my dissertation study.

I was shocked to find what a motivating factor the point totals were among the 446 universities buildings that earnd ratings prior to 2010.

I was impressed that the USGBC (which runs the LEED program) has been studying the performance of buildings and of its LEED system and making adjustments over time. They’ve upped the ante in the categories of Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, and Energy and Atmosphere.

Here’s an example of how the USGBC is bringing greater attention to site design (by offering more points in critical areas).

I found that the category of Energy and Atmosphere was the #1 predictor of LEED rating among the 181 university buildings in my sample.