The green building movement's outstanding growth has happened not because USGBC is out to build more green buildings. It's happening as a ripple effect of our efforts to achieve market transformation - to make the built environment and the building industry the cornerstone of a sustainable society.  

Over the last year, we've had the opportunity to review our progress, and to scope out the sometimes rocky terrain that lies ahead. Now, we're implementing the changes that will take USGBC to new heights in pursuit of a sustainable future.  

In 2004, USGBC's Board of Directors adopted a Strategic Plan outlining our short- and mid-term goals and objectives en route to achieving our ultimate goal of market transformation. Since that time, we've focused on realigning USGBC and our resources in correspondence with those goals, which has enabled us to develop and implement exciting new programs that will help the USGBC and its mem­bers advance the practice of green building. 

Underpinning our efforts to achieve our strategic goals has been a strong focus on the core values that have steered our organization since our founding. Change isn't always easy, but with our values guiding us — values like innovation, collaboration, leadership, and openness — we know that we will keep moving in the right direction.  

Before a building can stretch into the sky, it must first have a strong foundation. The USGBC community is our foundation — our members and our chapters give us the strength to reach for our aspirations. Growing and nurturing that community is one of our highest priorities, and over the last year we've made our community even stronger.  

USGBC's chapters are the "front door" of the Council, and our network now includes more than 60 groups working to achieve market transformation at the local level. Chapters are vital to the achievement of our goals, and we're transforming our organization to increase our communication and collaboration and help build our chapters' capacity to drive the green building movement forward.  

Equally important to our mission is our diverse and passionate membership. Our members are where the green building movement started, and where it continues to thrive. You are working every day to advance the practice of green building, whether it's building schools, creating new products, designing homes and offices, or educating your colleagues. Moreover, our members are the essence of the consensus process that is responsible for the LEED Rating System. In keeping with our commitment to that process, and to our core values of openness and transparency, we recently welcomed professional and trade associations to our community. Opening our doors to new members creates opportunities for new partnerships and collaborations, greatly increasing our ability to effect market transformation.  

In recognition and celebration of the diversity of our membership, we're also working to provide you with the specific tools and resources you need to flourish. Knowledge begets success, and we're developing new educational programs and resources to support every sector of the building industry: from contractors to landscape architects, from established industry leaders to those who are just starting their journey into green building.  

As the market evolves, so too must the tools we use to achieve market transformation. It has only been four years since the launch of the LEED Rating System, but in that time we have worked constantly to advance the standard in response to the needs of LEED users and to incorporate the best available science and technology. Here at Greenbuild, we'll be unveiling a refined version of LEED that streamlines registration, documentation, and certification for LEED projects, maximizing the benefits of LEED certification, dramatically reducing the complexity of the process and significantly reducing the cost. In concert with the refinements to the existing LEED process, we're kicking off the development of LEED Version 3, which will deliver more environmental benefit with each credit. LEED V3 will feature smarter credits, life cycle analysis, and bioregional weighting, to name just a few of the technical and scientific directions.  

In addition to these highly visible changes, we've also made a number of changes behind the scenes that will greatly increase our ability to meet the needs of our members and achieve our strategic goals. Chief among these is a realignment of the organization to correspond with the areas of our strategic plan, and the hiring of key staff people to support the realignment. The new structure ensures that each of our goals has the resources and talents necessary for success.  

Every chapter and member, every workshop taught or project registered, is like a stone thrown into a pond. Individually, each stone is just a ripple, but together, those ripples create a wave that trans­forms the surface of the water.  

A few weeks ago, USGBC's, Emerging Green Builders or­ganized a charrette for the Boys and Girls Club in Santa Fe , NM . Some great designs came out of the charrette, but the best part of the day was spending time with the kids who would actually use the building. Not only were they full of fun ideas — if only every building could have a yoga room, a rock climbing wall, and playing fields — but they were a perfect reminder of why we design green buildings in the first place. Our children deserve a healthy planet, and they deserve to play, work, and live in healthy buildings. But green building isn't just about energy efficiency or recycling or low VOC furnishings — it's about transforming an industry to create a sustainable future. We want to leave our children a world in which people and place are as important to the bottom line as profit. The ripples we have caused are creating waves — waves that will wash in a future in which our environment, our society, and our economy are in balance.

This is the fourth in a series of articles detailing the latest news and information that was released at Greenbuild 2005. All comments are the sole responsibility of the author. 

This article was originally posted 12/13/05.