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This guide presents a set of 15 best practices for owners, designers, and construction teams to reach high-performance goals and maintain a competitive budget. They are based on the recent experiences of the Research Support Facility owner and design-build team, and show that achieving this outcome requires that all key integrated team members understand their opportunities to control capital costs.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory is devising a new design-build project delivery model for fast-tracked, net-zero energy building. The process is progressive, performance-based design-build.

This guide primarily applies to facility managers and energy managers of large existing office buildings larger than 100,000 square feet, but also includes considerations for small and medium office buildings. By presenting general project planning guidance as well as financial payback metrics for the most common energy efficiency measures, this guide provides a practical roadmap for effectively planning and implementing performance improvements for existing buildings.