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This report presents a set of 15 best practices for owners, designers, and construction teams to reach high-performance goals and maintain a competitive budget. These best practices are based on the recent experiences of the Research Support Facility owner and design-build team for the Research Support Facility (RSF) on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) campus in Golden, Colorado, and show that achieving this high performance outcomes requires that all key integrated team members understand their opportunities to control capital costs.

This presentation Session I from the RSF Workshop discusses the unique energy efficiency features and performance of the Research Support Facility.

This presentation from Session III from the RSF Workshop discusses the cost considerations associated with designing, building, and operating the Research Support Facility.

The presentation from Session IV from the RSF Workshop discusses the impacts of occupant behavior on energy efficiency in the Research Support Facility. It also describes occupants' issues and concerns.

An energy-efficient data center includes targets for its power usage effectiveness (<1.2) and energy resource efficiency (< 0.9). It should be designed with hot isle–cold isle separation, use free cooling (economizer) and evaporative cooling when available, minimize fan energy, and use the most energy-efficient equipment possible.

This guide provides design teams with best practices for parking structure energy efficiency in the form of goals for each design aspect that affects energy use.

This presentation Session II from the RSF Workshop discusses the performance-based design-build process, which was used to procure and construct the Research Support Facility.

First costs, or capital costs, for energy efficiency strategies in office buildings are often a primary barrier to realizing high-performance buildings with 50% or greater energy savings. Historically, the industry has been unable to reach deep energy savings because of a reliance on energy cost savings and simple payback analysis alone to justify investments. A more comprehensive and integrated cost justification and capital cost control approach is needed. By implementing innovative procurement and delivery strategies, integrated design principles and cost tradeoffs, life cycle cost justifications, and streamlined construction methods, first cost barriers can be overcome. It is now possible to attain marketable, high-performance office buildings that achieve LEED Platinum and reach net zero energy goals at competitive whole building first costs, as illustrated by the U.S. Department of Energy’s and National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s latest high-performance office building, the Research Support Facility (RSF) on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory campus in Golden, Colorado.