Name of Nonprofit: Southface Institute
Website: www.southface.org
Mission: Southface promotes sustainable homes, workplaces, and communities through education, research, advocacy, and technical assistance for the primary audience of folks working in professions related to construction of the built environment (designers, architects, builders, construction workers).
Dissemination of technical information is the problem.
One of the ways Southface works to achieve its mission is through the EarthCraft program (www.earthcraft.org). EarthCraft is a collection of high-performance building standards for construction or renovation. These standards provide a framework for developers to achieve buildings that are efficient, healthy, affordable, and resilient.
The standards are created, maintained, and published by 3rd Parties (such as the American Engineering Assoc, i.e. not Southface who just collects them and trains people on them). The prevailing format in which this information is published by the 3rd Parties is a single, massive PDF (+500 pages that is updated every year or so) including standards for all possible elements of the built environment. This is generally the case both nationally and globally.
Southface wants to bridge the gap for designers, engineers, and construction teams by creating a more accessible digital library of the individual standards that can be used to easily aggregate into a single report which includes only the standards necessary for a one specific construction site (which will vary from job to job).
Currently, trained members of the EarthCraft program (designers, architects, construction teams) must manually open massive PDF documents and search for the specific standard they need. They then copy/paste the standard into a single document. Or they send via email / text message 1 standard when it is necessary (i.e. piecemeal). This is incredibly inefficient.
Successful implementation of the Library and Plan Builder would increase use of EarthCraft resources in planning by an estimated ~50%, resulting in more sustainably built or remodeled structures.
Additionally, much use of these documents and standards happens in the field on job sites, meaning on cell phones (many of which may have poor service, cracked screens, etc). In addition to the standards themselves, which include technical text and diagrams or published images, a crucial aspect of the execution is the ability to upload and attach additional images from the field of completed installation of a specific standard by EarthCraft users. For example, if the standard is on how to cite a wastewater drain, we want a builder who has used the standard recently to upload a picture of the finished product so others may reference and contact the uploader with specific questions they might run into.
Are they a 501(c)(3)? Yes
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Work phone: 404-604-3664