April Chapter Meeting (Virtual): High Performance Building Design – What the Future Holds for Our Industry

During the past two decades we have seen the growth and maturation of the green or high-performance building design concept.  The U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program was one of the main pioneers in this and ASHRAE’s Standard 189.1 helped evolve this concept into mandatory building codes.  This session provides an overview of how building systems have evolved to meet the demands for green building design and where we are headed in the future in this arena.  Also covered are topics such as the evolution of building codes to include green or sustainability features, how a building designer can include these concepts in their designs, the impact of new technologies such as a smart grid and BIM on the design, and discussion on how this will impact the industry.

Presenter Bio: Dr. Thomas Lawrence.

Dr. Lawrence is the Mechanical Engineering program lead with the University of Georgia, and has nearly 40 years of professional experience. He spent the first 18 years in industry and after going back for his PhD at Purdue he has been at UGA since January 2004. He is the past chair of ASHRAE Technical Committee 2.8 and is a member of the committee that wrote and maintains ASHRAE Standard 189.1 for High Performance Green Buildings. As an ASHRAE Distinguished Lecturer, he gives seminars related to high-performance buildings at venues around the world. Dr. Lawrence was named an ASHRAE Fellow in 2017 and was a Director-at-Large on the Board of Directors for ASHRAE from 2016-2019. 

Dr. Lawrence has a B.S. with Highest Distinction in Environmental Science from Purdue University (1978), a M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Oregon State University (1982) and a second M.S. degree in Engineering Management from Washington University in 1989. He received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University in the spring of 2004.