Practicing Transparency in 2018 – Have You Taken the First Step?
Step 1: Set a Transparency Practice Goal
We’ve all heard about the importance of goals in life, whether in our personal lives or organizations. One of the most important contributions that setting a goal can make towards getting things done is provide focus. In a recent article in Forbes magazine, 5 Reasons Why Goal Setting Will Improve Your Focus, Jeff Boss, a leadership team coach, provides an interesting perspective on this subject, which we have briefly excerpted here:
- Goals trigger behavior. Having a clear, compelling goal mobilizes your focus towards actionable behavior.
- Goals guide your focus. When you set a goal, you naturally direct your attention toward a next step and, as a result, lead yourself in the right direction which forces your actions – your behaviors – to follow.
- Goals sustain momentum. Seeing progress is addicting.
- Goals align your focus. Goal setting helps you align focus with behavior because you get feedback on your progress.
- Goal setting promotes self-mastery. While the process of goal setting is important because it helps unearth and identify what’s truly important to you, pursuing your goals is the real money-maker (literally and figuratively) because it builds self-efficacy; it develops yourself as the type of person who can achieve goals.
So, if you have the aspiration to make 2018 the year to advance Transparency in your work, consider how setting clear goals can help you make your aspirations a reality.
Just Starting Out With Transparency?
If you or your colleagues are just starting out with practicing transparency – or you are looking to refresh your understanding – HPDC’s CEU course “The Empowered Design Professional: Using HPDs to Make Healthier Material Choices” is a great place to start. The course is free and provides CEU credits for AIA, GBCI and IDCEC programs.
Then get acquainted with the over 3,600 products with published HPDs by visiting the HPD Public Repository. See below the list of manufacturers with newly-published HPDs in the past month:
HPDC Board Holds Annual Planning Meeting
Speaking of goals…the HPDC Board convened in February to review progress towards our strategic goals. Now that many of the basic tools needed to implement the HPD Open Standard have been established, the Board considered how we can most effectively continue to advance HPDC’s mission: “To continuously improve the building industry’s performance through transparency, openness and innovation in the practices of reporting, disclosure, specification and selection of building products.”
The Board established the priorities which will guide our work over the next 3-5 year period – it nets out that we are going to continue to focus, working with our growing membership, on the key programs and plans that we have today. Programs that help broaden educational resources, tools to make it ever easier to both create and use HPDs, and helping everyone who is engaged in product reporting, disclosure and transparency to develop more capabilities and create value from this work. There will be a growing emphasis on working with our ecosystem partners to help us all learn more rapidly from each other, share so that we increasingly reuse – not redo – and drive further, faster toward the ultimate goal of our work – a built environment that contributes positively to the health of people and the natural environment.
Some of the new capabilities on tap for 2018 include:
- Advanced CEU-credit courses
- Supplier HPD (a method for suppliers to directly enter HPD data)
- Third-Party Approved Preparer Program
- Specifier resources (User Guide and Standard Templates)
Stay tuned for our announcements of these programs as they become available.
HPD Open Standard v2.1.1 Approved by HPDC Board of Directors
“Transparency is the New Green” Webinar Replay Available
HPDC Member Sustainable Minds® first published their SM Transparency CatalogTM in October 2016 with 350 brands. Today it includes over 970 brands with published environmental disclosures (EPDs) and material disclosures for their products – including all published HPDs. An educational marketing and customer service platform, Sustainable Minds integrates product transparency into product marketing for manufacturers and building professionals to understand what the disclosures mean and how to use them to earn credits in green building rating systems.
Most recently, HPDC Executive Director Wendy Vittori participated as a guest speaker in a webinar, “Transparency is the New Green in Product Selection and Specification,” hosted by Terry Swack, Founder/CEO of Sustainable Minds, and Michael Heinsdorf, VP of Business Development for AvitruTM (formerly ARCOM). The webinar presented a preview of a 5-year trend report that Sustainable Minds is producing on product transparency in the building industry – click here to sign up for the Sustainable Minds mailing list and be the first to know when the report becomes available.
View the replay of the webinar for Manufacturers
View the replay of the webinar for AECs
Want to Be Featured in Our Next Member Corner?
Please contact us with your story about how you are advancing transparency practice and the use of the HPD Open Standard, and we will be happy to consider featuring your organization in future newsletters!
Our Newest Members
General
For the full list of HPDC members – now over 200 organizations – click here.
HPD Collaborative is a not-for-profit member organization responsible for the maintenance and evolution of the HPD Open Standard. To see the full list of HPDC members, click here. For more information, or to join HPD Collaborative, please visit the HPDC website. The work of HPD Collaborative is made possible by our members – through their volunteer efforts and annual dues – and by our sponsors, with their generous financial contribution. We would like also to thank the JPB Foundation for their support of our work through the HAMP project.
Members, log in to the Members Portal to get involved!
Not a Member? Click here to learn more about the benefits of membership!