Integrative Design

• Complete the Project Priorities Survey with as much of your development team as has been identified. Predesign coordination and goal-setting help ensure that all development team members align around specific development goals.
• The ideal time to complete the PPS should be determined by the design and development team. It should be completed early enough in the development process (during predesign or conceptual design) that the completed survey can positively influence design decisions as they are made.
• Engage relevant datasets and constructively challenge the assumptions of everyone on the development team to reach informed decisions.
• Qualitative data, especially from current or potential residents and staff, is also a critical source of information and can be used to broaden understanding of a project beyond what may be available from quantitative data about the project. Criterion 1.7 Inclusive Community Engagement is designed to support this type of data gathering, which can also lead to quicker approvals and other tangible benefits for developers, owners, residents, and communities.
• Consider engaging with a property insurance professional early in the design and planning process to understand how the overall project plan and resilience strategies may impact insurance premiums. Resilience assessments completed as part of the PPS can assist project teams in identifying relevant hazards, and insurance data can help teams prioritize adaptive strategies. Criterion 1.5 Adaptive Planning for Resilient Communities is designed to support this process as well.

The collaborative meeting may take any of the following forms:

• Green charrette
• Resident and staff engagement meeting
• Community stakeholder convening
• Preconstruction coordination or planning meeting

The collaborative meeting should result in:

• Meaningful engagement with residents and community members
• Identification of sustainability and resilience objectives for the project, and how these will be incorporated into the design
• Coordination of predevelopment work to be completed by the project team

• Use the Green Communities Criteria Checklist to document sustainability and resilience goals for the project.
• Throughout the integrative process, as decisions about sustainability strategies are being considered, place priority on multibenefit strategies that concurrently achieve goals for health and well-being, environmental resilience, and community and social resilience.
• As research progresses and decisions are made during predevelopment, assign responsibility within your design and development teams to create accountability:
  • » Track meeting minutes, attendees, topics discussed, and decisions made in an online database, spreadsheet, or file that is searchable.
  • » Include a training session for community members to be educated about the basics of green design, including its benefits and trade-offs, and be informed about the latest trends in green construction methods so that the public can provide detailed, constructive feedback to the design and development teams during engagement sessions.
• Prioritize holistic goal setting. The mission statement and research developed through the Project Priorities Survey required in Criterion 1.1 should be used to solidify project goals and strategies. Some questions to consider:
  • » How can the project leverage multibenefit strategies to holistically address climate and human resilience (see Criterion 1.5)?
  • » How does the project consider the synergies and overlaps between the eight categories of the Green Communities Criteria?
  • » Are both life-cycle costs and up-front costs being considered when making decisions about systems and materials?
  • » Have current or potential residents been involved throughout the predevelopment process? If so, how are their ideas and insights influencing project decisions? If not, how can they be included in future decisions?
• Operators of similar properties often have key insights that are helpful when making important decisions at the predevelopment stage. Consult operations and maintenance staff, if possible, on system selection, material selection, and climate concerns.
• Use data from previous projects as baselines to inform goals for the certifying project. For example, evaluate these datasets across your portfolio:
  • » Energy and water consumption
  • » Resident and community health needs
  • » Financial information, including pro forma assumptions and operating expense categories

Specifically:

• Include in the project’s construction specifications, Division 1 Section 01 81 13 Sustainable Design Requirements, all Green Communities criteria the project is pursuing. If the project documents do not include construction specifications, detail this information in the general notes to the contractor in the construction documents. Ensure the notes are clear and visible.
• Document how and when specific Green Communities criteria will be completed during a certain construction phase or process. (For example, general contractors must track waste for the project throughout demolition and construction to achieve certain strategies under Criterion 6.2 Reduction of Materials and Waste, and all heating, cooling, and ventilation ducts in dwelling units must be sealed throughout construction to meet optional Criterion 7.7 Clean Air: Enhanced IAQ.
• Identify the project team roles responsible for meeting the requirements of each Green Communities criterion.

• Attach the project’s completed Green Communities Checklist as an appendix to the specifications or the contract documents package.
• Plans and specifications should include a performance specification, examples of products that meet the specification, the metrics used to measure compliance, and how compliance will be confirmed.
• Architectural drawings should detail the air-sealing and compartmentalization approach for building and dwelling units. Drawings should indicate, for example, which materials make up the air-barrier and vapor-management layers and should clearly document expectations for the transition of those layers between materials on all six sides.

At minimum, the following information must be included in the education plan:

• The completed Project Priorities Survey (Criterion 1.1)
• A summary of outputs from the project’s charrettes and collaborative meetings (Criterion 1.2)
• The anticipated roles of each party in delivering the project goals and implementing both mandatory and optional criteria (Criterion 1.3)

• Attach the education plan, along with the completed Project Priorities Survey (Criterion 1.1), to the agenda for the construction kickoff and ensure the priorities receive requisite attention.
• Include a progress update on achieving Green Communities criteria as a meeting agenda item during regular construction meetings.
• Include timeline estimates for performance testing and verification schedules in the overall construction schedule — and within Division 1 Section 01 81 13 Sustainable Design Requirements — to ensure advance coordination between installation contractors and testing and verification contractors.
• As the project moves from design into construction, review requirements for Category 8: Operations, Maintenance, and Resident Engagement. Begin populating the documents required under Category 8 with relevant information, such as equipment specifications and manufacturers’ maintenance recommendations.
• Add self-verification requirements for the construction team to help ensure proper installation. Examples include testing of water fixtures, bath fans, and air sealing of air-handler closets.
• Review notes and deviations — including requests for information (RFI), approved submittals, and Architect’s Supplemental Instructions (ASIs) — that must be included in construction documentation. Clearly identify throughout final documentation how and why design specifications changed. Include this in construction specifications in Division 1 Section 01 81 13 Sustainable Design Requirements.

• Hold a series of facilitated charrettes and community meetings focused explicitly on the issues identified during the risk assessment and how they apply to the project and the nearby community.
• Consider a four-part assessment encompassing social, physical, functional, and strategic risk factors of the property.
• For help getting started with your risk assessment, visit “Assess Your Risks” in Enterprise’s Climate Safe Housing Introduction ( www.climatesafehousing.org/introduction), which includes sample questions to consider.
• Incorporate learnings from the hazard and risk assessments into subsequent phases of planning and design for the project to ensure risks can be effectively managed.
• Tap professional consultants — such as civil, environmental, or structural engineers — to help the team identify relevant hazards and make adaptation plans.
• Consider engaging with a property insurance professional early in the design and planning process to understand how the overall project plan and resilience strategies may impact insurance premiums. Resilience assessments completed as part of the PPS can assist project teams in identifying relevant hazards, and insurance data can help teams identify and prioritize adaptive strategies with multiple benefits.
• For rehabilitation projects, reach out to current staff to consider not only future conditions at the site but also which hazards have been problematic before.
• Craft strategies that are appropriate to the unique resident community at the property. For example, seniors-only buildings may have different needs from buildings that serve primarily families with children. Also, consider and prioritize social and cultural needs the property’s residents identify.
• Residents tend to lean on their neighbors for support. Promote strong social resilience by creating a safe and comfortable centralized location (often called a resilience hub) where people can access resources (e.g., water, food, electrical outlets) and where building management can disseminate relevant emergency information after a disruption.
• Consider incorporating Enterprise’s Climate Safe Housing strategies for multifamily buildings ( www.climatesafehousing.org/), including specific guidance for property resilience during an emergency.

Project teams will begin following the Health Action Plan process during predevelopment and will continue throughout design, construction, and operation. Steps 1 through 6 are required for compliance with this criterion [13 points]. Step 7 may not be feasible for all teams and is therefore available for an additional 3 points. The process requires the project team to:

• Commit to embedding health in project decisions
• Partner with a public health professional
• Collect and analyze community health data
• Engage with community stakeholders to prioritize health data and strategies
• Identify strategies to address priority health needs
• Create an implementation plan

AND, optionally:

• Create a monitoring plan

The first step to embarking on the Health Action Plan process is to commit to taking a health-informed approach to development. This commitment undergirds all subsequent actions and should be made early, ideally during schematic design. As part of this commitment:

• Assess where the project is in its life cycle to ensure that data collected and strategies selected can be integrated into design, construction, and operation
• Allocate time and funds to partner with a public health professional and engage community stakeholders
• Commit to integrating feasible strategies that can improve health outcomes

Establish a formal partnership, to include a contract or memorandum of understanding, with a public health professional to support data collection and analysis (Step 3), community engagement (Step 4), identification of evidence-based strategies (Step 5) and a plan to implement these strategies (Step 6) to address the health needs that emerge from the Health Action Plan process. The public health professional must have expertise in:

• Accessing, analyzing, and disaggregating local public health data (including social, environmental, and economic factors contributing to health needs)
• Facilitating resident and community engagement to reveal community health priorities
•  
  Identifying evidence-based strategies to promote health that can be used during design, construction, and operation (look for criteria tagged with a blue cross icon, indicating health as a leading theme for that criterion throughout all eight categories of the 2026 Green Communities Criteria)
• If pursuing Step 7, identifying methods and metrics for monitoring the impacts of built environment strategies on resident health

• Define the goal of your monitoring plan.
  • » Align the goal of the monitoring plan with the desired impact of the Health Action Plan for the project team and impacted residents. For instance, the goal of monitoring may be to determine whether the property improves or reduces the highest priority health issue for residents.
  • » Also consider secondary goals to serve other purposes important to the project team and impacted residents, such as informing grant funding, innovative partnerships with the health care sector, or future project design.
• Select design, operational, and health performance metrics to track over time.
  • » Include design and operation metrics for each of the health-promoting strategies selected as part of the Health Action Plan process
  • » Include health metrics to assess the property in general or for each health-promoting strategy
  • » Include additional types of metrics as needed
• Determine strategies of measurement (e.g., resident surveys, monthly reports on frequency of use, IAQ assessment checklist) for each metric that align with the project team’s capacity and capabilities.
• Determine the frequency of assessment for each metric.
• Define the staff, residents, or partners responsible for data collection, analysis, and dissemination.

An inclusive process enables the project to better reflect community needs and can also:

• Increase the financial viability and sustainability of a project
• Build goodwill between community and developer, mitigating community objections and creating momentum for future development processes
• Reduce antagonism in the development process and streamline decision-making, which saves time and money and increases interest from potential occupants
• Shift the paradigm of inequity that has determined how investments are made in communities
• Reduce the risk of displacing residents and small businesses. By honoring cultural identities, resident voices, and community histories, project teams can more successfully prioritize community preferences and contribute to an increase in social cohesion, health, and equity for residents.

Work with residents to identify community needs and assets. Complete the Cultural Resilience Assessment worksheet as you take the following actions and then share how these outputs impacted the project goals and strategies [8 points]:

• Listen to community-identified needs, assets, priorities, and insights as core inputs for the project mission.
• Ground-truth any existing data or plans with the community to gain more local insight and perspective from people’s lived experience and knowledge.
• Identify factors in this project that may produce and perpetuate inequities. Determine what adverse impacts or unintended consequences could result from this project, which racial and/or ethnic groups could be negatively affected, and how adverse impacts could be prevented or minimized.

As you convene stakeholders, complete the Cultural Advisory Group Charter template, which specifies how to:

• Define the group’s purpose, responsibilities, expectations, and incentives for participation
• Create an open and welcoming process for inviting advisory group members that prioritizes a diverse range of interests, knowledge, and experience, including age, roles, and relationships to the expected resident community
• Determine the parameters, practices, and terms for the cultural advisory group members’ roles and services

Treat residents as community experts:

• Invite interested residents to form an advisory group or community leadership committee to regularly advise the project team, share community perspectives and values, and liaise between developers and residents.
• Determine a form of compensation or stipend for community leadership roles.
• Consult with the property staff and resident services coordinators during early project goal setting.

Give each person a voice:

• Create an environment that invites participation from all people and elevates every voice.
• Conduct one-on-one interviews and small focus groups to encourage full participation. Use multiple forms of communication (e.g., verbal, written, drawn).
• Carve out staff time or hire a community outreach specialist with cultural competence to involve residents and facilitate meetings.
• Allow for adequate and sustained time spent in the community.

Go where the people are:

• Messaging about the project should come from a trusted community liaison (e.g., a community-based organization, block club, community group, cultural leader, local elected official, etc.).
• Use the preferred forms of messaging found in the community. Monitor the tone and content of public social media, if used to solicit participation.
• Get on the agenda of already-scheduled community meetings or co-host a cultural event with a trusted community leader or organization to talk about project ideas and collect initial feedback.
• Meet at a time and location that is convenient and accessible (this may include weekday evenings or weekends) and provide a meal and childcare.