The Green Benchmarking Tool

While design intent can be met through a well-designed green building and its certification, it is critical that these buildings perform as designed. Arc platform by GBCI enables benchmarking projects around the globe, as Mili Majumdar, Managing Director, Green Business Certification Inc and Senior Vice President, USGBC explains.   Design and construction of greener and healthier buildings have significantly gained traction over last decades. Performance of any building is heavily dependent on operation and maintenance and often there is a gap in this area. Launched last year by Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI), Arc aims to bridge this gap and provides a unique platform to track performance of buildings so that they can perform as designed and set new benchmarks for better performance. Arc is a digital platform which is designed to help companies to collect, manage, and benchmark their data on a local as well as global level, and to improve the sustainability performance.It helps connecting people all over the world to take appropriate actions and inspire them to make the most informed decisions related to sustainability of our built environment. It is a transformational initiative that has a huge leverage effect on tracking and reducing emissions and other environmental impacts from buildings. Arc provides the building owner and the building facility manager with a tool to engage with the occupants to create healthier and efficient working and living spaces. It also promotes healthy competition among spaces to raise the bar on performance and set new standards of performance. It thus indirectly promotes newer technology development and helps users to participate in maintaining or betterment of building performance. For example, energy performance in an office space can be improved by regulating thermostat set point, or switching off lights that are not required. Arc helps track both parameters i.e. energy performance and human experience and thus ensuring that thermal or visual comfort is not compromised at the cost of efficiency. Arc is a platform that helps a project to monitor and benchmark its action oriented strategies across five categories i.e. energy, water, waste, transportation and human experience (indoor environmental quality). Today more than ever before, the green construction drive depends on technology and data, and the future of green building is concentrated on performance. Arc signifies a new era for green building.   The Salient Features The Arc platform is a complement to green building rating systems, standards, protocols and guidelines and allows buildings and spaces to connect to the built environment in a new way by comparing performance metrics and connecting them to green building strategies.

• Arc technology brings data, mobility and the most disruptive technologies available today to offers a performance solution for every building.
• The Arc performance score helps track your project’s improvements in real time. Watch as you move closer towards
• The comprehensive global data analytics can be leveraged to benchmark your project’s performance, and view project ratings on a local and international scale.
• The simple user-interface has easy-to-use resource management dashboards, automated control algorithms and hosts all project assets in a secure storage space.
• Arc streamline team management enables sharing internal information by communicating between departments.
• Arc eliminates complexities and barriers to behavioural change.

With Arc, everyone using a space can be involved in its improvement e.g. commercial buildings, residences, retail, hospitals, schools, shopping malls, education institutes, industrial facilities, districts, cities, etc. Industry leaders like Delhi Airport, DMRC, Ascendas, Saint-Gobain, etc., to name a few, have adopted Arc to improve their sustainability quotient of their project portfolio. The Arc Performance Score Arc calculates a performance score out of 100, based on global building data and action-oriented strategies across five categories:

• Energy
• Water
• Waste
• Transportation
• Human Experience

LEED certification can be earned by meeting a set of requirements listed in Arc, and achieving a performance score of 40 for Certified, 50 for Silver, 60 for Gold and 80 for Platinum.