Sustainable Buildings Industry Council - Summary of the SBIC

The Sustainable Buildings Industry Council (SBIC) was founded in 1980 with a mission to inspire and unite the building industry toward higher achievement through a multi–pronged approach of education, advocacy, outreach and a mutual exchange of ideas.

The Council has a vision of dramatically improving the long–term appreciation and performance of buildings by advocating a whole new approach to design, operation and construction of buildings.

SBIC's age–old commitment to better buildings was originally focused on renewable energy usage and energy efficiency. It transposed to a broader focus on a complete range of sustainable green strategies including using eco–friendly building materials such as green flooring. SBIC now progresses to the next logical phase in keeping with the need of the hour which is reaching "beyond green." The focus is now to generate facilities that put together a more complete variety of design objectives towards advanced performance "whole" buildings. Irrespective of whether such buildings are residential or commercial; publicly owned or of private ownership, the emphasis will focus on sustainability as a prime characteristic, including the use of sustainable materials like bamboo and cork flooring. However the building would also need to be cost–effective, functional and operational, architecturally stimulating, safe and secure and remain respectful to historic resource.

Membership of SBIC is open to all professionals and organizations connected with the building industry and who share the same commitment and vision. Such entities could be companies, trade associations, architects, builders, engineers, utilities manufacturers, flooring manufacturers, suppliers, academics and students.

The SBIC runs several educational programs for professionals. Currently the Council offers five key programs, the two most important being the following:

High Performance School Buildings Program:

The program was driven in 1996 based on anticipation that about 6000 K12 schools would require to be built in the US by 2007. The council launched an aggressive program to influence the design decisions made by the school buildings facilities planners to design and build not mere mediocre, run–of–the–mill constructions but actual modernistic high–performance buildings.

Residential Buildings Program:

Millions of homes are built each year in the US that consume on an ongoing annual basis, about 20% of the country’s energy. SBIC's program is oriented towards reducing this energy consumption by a slew of methods from the design stage onward. The areas of conservation encompass renewable energy, efficient water use, indoor environmental quality improvement and the increased use of green materials, such as recycled floors or eco–friendly floor options.

Currently SBIC conducts an intensive 2 day 12 hour Energy–10 workshop intended for architects, engineers and others technically involved with building design. It assumes a holistic approach to building architecture with strong emphasis on increased usage of natural light and energy resources.