Provides Practical, How-To Guidance for Using HPDs in Building Projects
UPDATED 10/12/2016 – The Project Team User Guide is now available for public download. Please click here to get directed to the download page.
The building industry’s first Project Team User Guide for the Health Product Declaration® (HPD) Open Standard was announced today by the HPD Collaborative. The HPD Open Standard is the leading format in the built environment for reporting product contents and associated health information. The Standard enables accurate, reliable and consistent evaluation and comparison of building products, so that project teams can undertake product selection and specification with a more informed understanding of a product’s health-related attributes.
The Guide is first being distributed to HPDC members as a pre-release draft, with an interest to garner feedback from members before its public release. Information about HPDC membership is available at www.hpd-collaborative.org/membership.
The Guide provides practical, “how to” information for project teams that want to incorporate material health considerations into their work. It also contains background on the HPD Open Standard and explains how the information in a completed HPD can be used to inform specification and procurement decisions in project settings.
“The Guide captures best practices we have learned in the past several years, applying the information in completed HPDs to real project needs,” said Susan Kaplan, Senior Associate and Managing Director of Specification and Sustainability at HLW International and co-author of the Guide. “Our goal is to help colleagues get up the learning curve in this new area, as quickly as possible. It is going to be useful for all project teams, but especially so for those who are new to this area of practice and want to get ready for LEED v4 in November.”
The primary users for the Guide are building project team members: architects, interior designers, contractors, specifiers, and others involved in building material evaluation. The Guide may also be useful for those who are creating HPDs or using the data in completed HPDs for analytical and research purposes. The HPD Open Standard provides an easy and comprehensive path for documenting compliance with many green building certifications, including LEED v4 Materials Ingredients credits and WELL Building Feature 97.
“The Health Product Declaration Open Standard represents a critical step forward for our industry in achieving the disclosure of building material ingredients. Once we can know what is in the products we build with, we begin to have the opportunity to select those that will result in healthier buildings. This Guide explains how to take these steps today,” commented Robin Guenther, Principal at Perkins+Will, and author of the Foreword to the Guide.
The Guide will become publicly available in early October, and will be distributed at no cost, via the HPDC website.
“The HPD Collaborative’s mission is to help our industry explore and develop new ways of working together to create true collaboration in developing healthier products for our buildings. A few years from now we will look back on this early stage of evolving practice and hopefully be rewarded by all the progress that this step has made possible,” said Amanda Kaminsky, Founder, Building Product Ecosystems and Chair of the HPD Collaborative.
For more information about the HPD Collaborative, visit the HPD Collaborative website: www.hpd-collaborative.org.
About the Health Product Declaration® Collaborative
The Health Product Declaration Collaborative is a non-profit, customer-led, member organization committed to the continuous improvement of the building industry’s environmental and health performance through transparency and innovation. The HPD Collaborative created, supports and advances the HPD Open Standard, a format that enables accurate, reliable and consistent reporting of building product content and associated health information. The HPD Open Standard is freely available to all at www.hpd-collaborative.org.