Mahle and Zuluaga of SWA selected for Urban Green Council task force

According to Steven Winter Associates, Inc. (SWA), Maureen Mahle, vice president and director of sustainable housing services and Marc Zuluaga, a vice president and the director of multifamily energy services, have been selected by the Urban Green Council (UGC) to serve on the Building Resiliency Task Force for New York City. Mahle and Zuluaga will join leaders in the city's real estate community to take an in-depth look at current building codes and operational practices to make recommendations on how to prepare our buildings and infrastructure for future storms. The task force, assembled at the request of city council speaker Christine Quinn and mayor Michael Bloomberg, plans to release recommendations by the summer of 2013. Mahle will co-chair the Homes Special Committee, which will focus on developing recommendations for small buildings that house one to three families. She will work with the Steering Committee, along with the chairs of other committees and representatives from Urban Green, the Mayor's Office and the Speaker's Office. This committee will serve as the final decision-making body for the Task Force. Zuluaga has been asked to participate on the Residential Buildings Committee, as well as the HVACR, Plumbing and Fire Protection Working Group to help guide the Task Force in making recommendations for residential buildings and their supporting infrastructure and essential services. Mahle is vice president and director of sustainable housing services at SWA. As an engineer and specialist in high performance homes, Mahle provides expert sustainable design, specification and construction consulting for residential projects ranging from private residences to mixed-use and multifamily buildings. She also manages SWA's work as a provider for the U.S. Green Building Council LEED for Homes program. Mahle also serves as the lead member of the Consortium for Advanced Residential Buildings (CARB), a U.S. Department of Energy Building America research partner. Zuluaga has directed energy audits on over 20,000 million s/f of existing buildings and leads a team committed to applying a rigorous technical approach to the evaluation and implementation of a wide range of building upgrades. Zuluaga was also the project manager for the Deutsche Bank / Living Cities Energy Efficiency Data Report Project. The primary goal of the project was to measure the actual energy savings of 100+ retrofit projects in order to develop the data necessary for underwriters to rationally lend against future energy savings. A non-profit organization established in 2001, Urban Green is funded by contributions from foundations, its 1,100 members, and over 50 corporate sponsors. The organization's goal is to help transform the built environment in New York City with models that can be replicated in urban centers nationwide. Steven Winter Associates, Inc. provides research, consulting and advisory services to improve commercial, residential and multifamily built environments for private and public sector clients. The company specializes in energy, sustainability and accessibility consulting as well as certification, research & development and compliance services. Its engineers and architects have led the way since 1972 in the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. As a matter of course, the company's staff collaborates with its clients to produce the most cost-effective and innovative solutions.