GSA Green Building Advisory Committee Updates

In mid-September, members of the roofing industry participated in a meeting with representatives of the General Services Administration to better understand various GSA policy concepts for addressing embodied carbon of construction projects and building products. In recent months, GSA’s Green Building Advisory Committee has presented a number of approaches, which are summarized in the blog post here. While the recommended approaches may look familiar to most who work in this space, members of the roofing industry coalition wanted to understand more about the recommendations and how they may impact building alteration projects like roof replacements. GSA representatives agreed with concerns raised by ERA that individual projects’ durability and resilience needs would be balanced against the embedded carbon requirement. In addition, we were pleased that the GSA’s whole-building approach allows users to use a “systems approach” to assessing environmental impacts. ERA staff is working to get a better understanding on the specific requirements in the recent guidelines to make sure that ERA’s Life Cycle Assessment will comply and to be able to provide guidance to our members on whether the industry-wide PCR, EPDs, and manufacturer-specific EPDs will comply.