Green Building Council Adopts RELi Resilience Standard

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has adopted a resilience standard developed by the Minneapolis office of the Perkins + Will architecture firm. The RELi standard is a point-based system and includes many LEED-centric credits along with risk mitigation credits at the building and neighborhood scale. The intent is to provide greater adaptability and resilience to weather and natural disasters in the built environment as a compliment to the LEED green Building Rating System. The RELi Standard replaces the LEED Resilient Design pilot credits .

The USGBC is currently refining RELi to integrate the LEED pilot credits with RELi’s credits. A new Resilience Steering Committee has been created to make improvements chaired by Doug Pierce, the principal investigator for the RELi 1.0 standard and Senior Associate at Perkins+Will. Alex Wilson will be vice chair.

Like LEEDv4, the current standard has many credits that concrete contributes directly and indirectly: Safer Design for Extreme Weather, Wildfire + Seismic Events; Adaptive Design for Extreme Weather, Wildfire, Fire + Seismic Events; Passive Heating and Cooling; Use Regionally Sourced + Manufactured Materials and Products; Low-Emitting Materials; Acoustic Performance; Energy Optimization-Carbon Neutral, Net Zero; Heat-Island Reduction - Roof and Non-Roof.

Build with Strength, a coalition led by NRMCA that promotes concrete building systems through communications, project promotion, education and advocacy, can help leverage sustainable standards such as RELi to help place more concrete. Click here for more information or contact Tien Peng at tpeng@nrmca.org or 206-913-8535.