Saint Patrick’s Day brought a boatload of new “green” bulding energy-performance analysis tools, including a trio of emmigrant products with long resumes, to U.S. architects, consultants and engineers. In announcements on March 17, both Bentley Systems, Exton, Pa., and Autodesk Inc., San Raphael, Calif., introduced significant and quite different tools to a practice both companies expect will grow rapidly. “I think there is huge demand,” says Huw W. Roberts, Bentley’s global marketing director. “All design firms are integrating this kind of design analysis and addressing these issues. The demand for this will be 100%.”
“It is becoming a bigger part of our work,” confirmed architect Mark Schwettmann, an SOM associate director, digital design manager for the San Francisco office and a user of Autodesk’s energy-performance analysis tools. “A year ago some firms were doing these kinds of analysis on a few projects, but now every project does this and needs to do it. It is a basic part of the design process.”