BE+ CONNECTS is an interactive and engaging discovery tool that curates evolving companies, and their linked professionals, to promote expertise to clients designing and constructing high-performance buildings. It all starts with the foundational perspective that a given company's expertise is in its people and is proven through its completed and in-progress projects.
This is what makes BE+ CONNECTS unique. The search results reward companies and individual professionals with proven high-performance project experience. This is accomplished by connecting project profiles directly to the people and companies that made it possible. For the search user, results are ranked by relevant industry and project experience, and once they discover a potential collaborator, they are always guided to contact a selected professional directly.
There are three profile page types:
Professional: Individual professionals have personal profiles which showcase their full career and project experience. The page showcases to users why a given professional has the proven experience to make their project possible. With connected companies and projects, a professional is able to give context and aggregate data to showcase their impact.
Company: Company Profiles seek to showcase the breath of embodied employee knowledge and intellectual property that makes up their total experience. Both linked professionals and linked projects aggregate to provide total years of experience and organizational project impact.
Project: Project Profiles are the backbone of the site and prove the expertise of the professionals under their connected companies. These profiles capture the relevant high-performance project stats and are to be connected to the professionals and companies that made it possible. Project profiles are shared and can be edited by any Pro on the site.
Who Can Join?
Architects, Contractors, Developers, Engineers, Sub-contractors, and Sustainability consultants who work on commercial and large residential buildings are welcomed to join.
Companies, professionals, and projects can be located anywhere in the United States, with sorting and filtering functions provided to help facilitate relevant connections.
User accounts and professional profiles are free to create, with the full ability to edit, publish, and connect project profiles. All accounts require site admin approval before going live.
Company Profiles are free for the first year and require a user account to create.
What is a High-Performance Building?
High-performance (HP) buildings are healthy, durable, long-lasting structures that operate with less energy, use fewer natural resources, and require less maintenance than traditional buildings, and they adapt easily to new uses for the future.
Learn more about HP Buildings and their benefits with the High-Performance Building Procurement Toolkit.
What is Net Zero or Net Zero Ready?
A Net Zero building generates as much energy as it consumes on an annual basis. To achieve zero energy a project first reduces energy use through efficiency measures and optimizes for renewables. Once Net Zero Energy Ready, the project requires renewable energy on-site and/or off-site to offset the remaining energy use.
What requirements must a project meet to be included?
There are three requirements that every project must meet to be eligible for a project profile:
- It is a commercial or large residential building.
- If residential, it should be over 15,000 GSF or include over 15 units.
- It is all-electric during normal operation
- All electric for building heating operation means that electricity is used for heating during “normal operation” when systems are operating as intended and ambient temperature is above the ASHRAE 99% design condition. (Special use buildings such as health care facilities and laboratories are given more leeway and may be included if the building relies primarily on heat pumps for building heating and through efficiency and electrification achieve ≥90% fossil fuel reduction vs. the ASRHAE 90.1 baseline.)
- It is ultra energy efficient
- Ultra energy efficient is defined as percent reduction from the ASHRAE 90.1 baseline according to one of the following:
- 2010: 25% below App G baseline EUI
- 2013: 18% below App G baseline EUI
- 2016: 5% below App G PEI
- 2019: 0% below App G PEI
- Ultra energy efficient is defined as percent reduction from the ASHRAE 90.1 baseline according to one of the following:
What is the difference between a user account and a professional profile?
A user account is your private access to the BE+ CONNECTS site, and this account gives you the ability to create and edit professional, company, and project profiles. A professional profile is your public face, a page created to display your work and connections as a high-performance building professional. Profiles are optional, as we welcome users to join who are in support roles, like office admins, who may be tasked to update their companies page and projects, but who would not necessarily have a professional profile themselves.
Who can make a user account?
User accounts are primarily intended for Architects, Contractors, Developers, Engineers, Sub-contractors, and Sustainability consultants who work on commercial and large residential buildings. Secondarily, user accounts can be created for other employees who will update profiles on a company's behalf, but not identify as a “Pro” themselves. All user accounts require approval from BE+ admin staff before they go live and site edit access is granted.
Who can edit project profiles?
Anyone with an approved user profile can edit project profiles. This includes everything from updating media and text content to linking and unlinking professional and company profiles. All revisions are logged to allow others to see when the page was last updated.
Who can edit company profiles?
Anyone with an approved user profile can edit company profiles. This includes everything from updating media and text content to linking and unlinking professional and company profiles. All revisions are logged to allow others to see when the page was last updated.
Who can edit professional profiles?
Only the user account associated with that professional profile. If you see something on another user’s profile that needs to be addressed, please use the feedback link at the bottom of the page.