BBH Solutions, Inc. and DAS USA's trading technology showroom is now LEED certified. The space, which is located at 875 Avenue of the Americas, is a joint venture which showcases DAS' trading and control desk solutions with fully functional cloud-hosted and on-premise technology solutions supplied by BBH. It also serves as an active workspace for DAS and BBH employees. Visitors to the showroom are met with an interactive display of desk and technology configurations that demonstrate the functionality and power of BBH's and DAS' respective solutions.
LEED - or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - certification provides independent, third-party verification that a building, home or community was designed and built using strategies aimed at achieving high performance in key areas of human and environmental health: Sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.
Each category in a LEED rating system consists of prerequisites and credits. Prerequisites are required elements, or green building strategies that must be included in any LEED certified project. Credits are optional elements, or strategies that projects can elect to pursue to gain points toward LEED certification. LEED prerequisites and credits work together to provide a common foundation of performance and a flexible set of tools and strategies to accommodate the circumstances of individual projects.
The project was completed with sustainable building practices, under the supervision of LEED consulting firm SKYed Eco. Notably, the space design received LEED points for utilizing methods that reduce potable water use by 32% and lighting power by 16% compared to conventional interior construction projects. Appliances and equipment installed in the showroom, including desktop computers, monitors, and network peripherals, achieved an Energy Star total equal to 100% by rated power.
Other components of the project include:
* 42% of the total furniture and furnishing by material value were salvaged, refurbished, or reused
* Use of daylight and views - the project has achieved LEED daylighting requirements in 87% of all regularly occupied spaces
* Diversion of 77% of the onsite generated construction waste from landfill.
In addition, BBH Solutions implemented cloud-hosted voice and data services that help to reduce the showroom's carbon footprint by lowering electrical usage associated with onsite data center power and cooling. The conference room is equipped with a Cisco Telepresence Express solution for video conferencing.
According to a recent study by the Carbon Disclosure Project, enterprise-sized companies in the US and UK that implement four immersive telepresence rooms can cut CO2 emissions by 10 million metric tons while saving almost $19 billion in travel expenses between 2010 and 2020.
Since its grand opening in October 2011, the showroom has served as a venue for several educational and networking events. The range of topics covered during these events have included sustainable building practices, cloud computing and hosting, virtualization and network storage, and IP-based trading turret technology. Of recent note, DAS hosted an IIDA, CEU-approved lecture on understanding the multi-faceted activity of designing the objects that find themselves in the environments we live and work in. SKYed has also hosted LEED exam preparation seminars in the showroom. Tags: