BuildingEnergy NYC 2021 Request for Proposals

The call for proposals has closed! Thank you to all who submitted proposals for consideration.
 

Timeline

Call for Proposals
February 18–March 23
Review Period
March 24-May 27
Notification of Status
Early June 2021

 

Request for Proposals

BuildingEnergy NYC 2021 will take place on Wednesday & Thursday, September 29 & 30, 2021. The format of the event (virtual vs. in-person vs. hybrid) is TBD. The deadline to submit conference session proposals is Tuesday, March 23.

The theme of BuildingEnergy NYC 2021 is Collaboration. Gone are the days in our comfortable silos. To achieve essential climate goals for NYC and beyond, we need the power of collaboration. When we work together and learn together, our BuildingEnergy community can succeed with:

  • Building creators, building owners, and building users connecting through integrated design process (IDP) and beyond
  • Lessons from Covid transformed to lasting changes in our practice
  • A workforce that’s well trained, safe, and honored
  • Design & operations staff communicating and resolving competing priorities
  • Reliable performance data to support capital planning and improve building performance
  • Carbon calculations that include all phases of construction and operation
  • Climate-similar cities sharing success stories and best practices
  • Equity included in every solution

But how? And who’s going to do the work? We need your best answer: send us your session proposal for BuildingEnergy NYC 2021 so that together we can create the most useful, forward-looking conference and build a professional community of collaboration. We’re especially interested in hosting speaking teams that can show the power of collaboration.

In addition to the list above, these topics are of keen interest:

  • Preventive maintenance through smart design
  • Connections between participants, including tenants, maintenance staff, construction workers
  • Operations data
  • Workforce shortage: How to generate interest to grow the workforce; model programs
  • Balancing occupant health, ventilation, energy efficiency
  • Third-party standards
  • Barriers to electrification
  • LL97
  • Policy & retrofit solutions from cities other than NYC
  • All aspects of retrofit, from completing deep energy retrofits (DER) to addressing fire codes to providing equitable tenant leases

If you would like to work on your proposal as a team before submitting, this document contains a list of the fields you will be asked to complete after you are logged in to your nesea.org account.
 

Areas of Focus

NESEA’s mission is to advance the adoption of sustainable energy practices in the built environment by cultivating a community where practitioners share, collaborate and learn. We envision a built environment in the Northeast that is climate neutral, adaptive and resilient, energy independent, architecturally inspiring, and supportive of connection and community.

We seek proposals that support this mission and vision, within the following areas of focus:

  • Design Process
  • Integrated Systems    
  • Technology
  • Operations & Maintenance
  • Workforce
  • Equity
  • Health & Comfort
  • Materials & Embodied Carbon
  • Occupant Engagement & Empowerment
  • Energy Production & Storage
  • Capital Planning
  • Policy & Codes
  • Standards in Action (ex. LBC, NZE, Passive House)
  • Resilience

 

About the Review Process

Proposals will be reviewed and vetted by a volunteer NESEA-Member content committee to ensure that conference sessions are genuinely useful to attendees. Successful proposals:

  • Feature sustainable and high-performance building practices, techniques, solutions, and/or governance.
  • Present innovative material and ideas.
  • Have rich data to support claims.
  • Avoid focusing on specific, proprietary products and/or services.
  • May describe learning from mistakes as well as from successes.
  • May offer a more interactive format beyond simply a lecture and/or slides.
  • Include diverse speakers and panelists.
  • Are comprehensive and complete upon submission.

 

Keep in Mind...

  • You must be logged in to your nesea.org account to create a proposal. (NESEA Membership is not required to have an account.) This allows you to save your proposal as a draft and come back to work on it as often as you like before submitting.
  • NESEA does not cover travel or lodging expenses for speakers.
  • If you would like to work on your proposal as a team before submitting, this document contains a list of the fields you will be asked to fill out once you are logged in to your nesea.org account.

Questions? Contact Ben Sachs-Hamilton, Conference Manager, at bsachs-hamilton@nesea.org.