About Us

 

At the core of the Building Performance Lab’s mission is support for the citywide effort to reduce the carbon footprint of our buildings as well as developing a workforce to manage those buildings for peak performance. We work closely with organizations such as the Sallan Foundation, NYSERDA, and Urban Agenda in a number of initiatives. 

Since early 2007, through a stakeholder process, over 100 representatives of a diverse cross-section of the real estate sector have guided the Lab’s development. This Building Performance Stakeholder Consortium meets several times a year to identify best practices, market needs, and topics for curriculum development and applied research.

As New York City’s only public university, CUNY has a crucial role to play in preparing a workforce that can meet the city’s needs. The Lab capitalizes on CUNY’s ability to deliver education and training to multiple audiences: engineering students through degree programs, practicing engineers, building operators, and property managers via continuing education. 

Since 2006, the Lab's Intern Energy Program has placed CUNY students in a variety of energy measurement, management, and research projects.  The program is the start of a career ladder that has led, for many of our students, from an associate degree program to a bachelor’s degree program.  The program gives students exposure to the many professional pathways presented by advanced property and energy management, and sets them up as leaders in the new green economy.

Continuing education classes enable building technicians to learn about new methodologies for system monitoring and optimization that can be directly applied in their work settings.

The Lab encourages early adopters to undertake projects and pursue certifications such as EPA Energy Star Portfolio Manager and LEED for Existing Buildings, while providing learning opportunities and strengthening ties between CUNY and the city’s engineering community.

The Lab focuses CUNY research competencies on the buildings sector, and collaborations can be pursued with building research institutions beyond CUNY, generating opportunities for technology transfers into the local market.

Lab personnel also participate actively in professional associations, including Urban Agenda's Green Collar Jobs Roundtable Working Groups, which are developing recommendations for policy and training programs to foster New York City's emerging green-collar economy.

History of the Lab

The Building Performance Lab was generated out of two years of university-wide research and collaboration with workforce representatives undertaken by the CUNY Sustainable Building Initiative (CUNY-SBI), which began in 2004.

CUNY-SBI's intent was to explore existing CUNY resources. Objectives included:

• Identify expert CUNY faculty in the field

• Survey existing courses, trainings opportunities and programs

• Cultivate relationships between industries

• Develop structures to enable ongoing collaboration between CUNY and Industry

• Survey business and industry's education and training needs in the field

• Identify credit and non-credit educational programs, training workshops, and professional development

• Form new programs, workshops and other development vehicles

CUNY-SBI received assistance from Urban Agenda, located at the Queens College Labor Resource Center, to identify opportunities to collaborate with labor unions. The Initiative's collaboration with Local 94, the Operating Engineers’ Union, enabled their programs to become accredited by CUNY and to explore the co-development of programming on retrocommissioning. Over time, the mission of CUNY-SBI was developed and focused into what is now the CUNY Building Performance Lab.

BPLab received a two-year seed grant from NYSERDA, and continues to work closely with Local 94, Urban Agenda, as well as the Sallan Foundation.