NASA Partners with DOE to Construct 'Greenest' Federal Building

September 22, 2011

NASA's Ames Research Center and the Department of Energy (DOE), at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif. are collaborating on technologies and processes for what may be the "greenest," highest-performing building in the federal government. Originally developed for aerospace applications, NASA intelligent system software will be installed in the new building, called Sustainability Base, by Ames engineers. These NASA-developed control and Integrated Systems Health Management (ISHM) technologies will be an integral part of the building. To help integrate these "smart system" technologies, the Building Technologies Department at Berkeley Lab developed a Building Information Model (BIM) to serve as the repository for the building's systems information during its life cycle. Using data from the BIM, Berkeley Lab developed an energy-performance simulation model to optimize the building's energy operations.