Function: remains engaged with our clients target audiences to better understand their habits, thought processes and to stay ahead of industry trends. This enables us to create on-target messaging that resonates with our clients' customers and be a guide for product manufacturers in the rapidly changing landscape of the building and construction industry. Here are some things we've been hearing lately:
“Energy Efficiency is mission critical for design projects.”
“Designing buildings with superior air, moisture, water and thermal performance is the most important thing right now and will only become more important.”
“There are two big challenges in construction. First of all, making it stand up. And then the other thing is keeping the water out because water just tends to wreck everything. So controlling the movement of moisture is primary because once you get water into something, all bets are off.”
“The change that has had to most impact on how we design is not using the old library of product catalogs. Now everything’s online and when we’re looking for product we contact the company directly.”
“Construction firms being pushed to meet shorter deadlines due to fierce competition which negatively impacts quality of buildings.”
“BIM is changing the way the industry works – integrating systems between design and mechanical engineers – who are fighting tooth and nail on the use of Revit. There’s hydrothermal software for buildings helping professionals gather and analyze data. And other software modeling like WUFI. This will help the big push to retrofit existing buildings to make them more efficient.”
“Trends I’m seeing are first, creating higher R-Values, and second sourcing products that are renewable with a low carbon value.”
“VOCs are an emerging issue – think about it, you don’t see any old painters around do you?”
“Keep the water out - Water, air and water vapor all create health problems, destroy R-Value and impact the structural integrity of the building.”
“One thing that would be helpful for architects would be some method of not only education of how moisture and air management systems work in conjunction with each other, but also the tools that show you what works and what doesn’t. Some of the data that is available on building performance, you can’t interpret. I have no idea what the end analysis means – I have all this information but no indication of whether a system works or not or where the potential for failure is.”
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