CAD News for Govies is a weekly feature on Acronym that scans thousands of industry articles to present you with a regular source of CAD and GIS news, information and ideas that impact the public sector.

Here’s the latest round-up:

How to Create a Killer CAD Team: Get Them Certified

Arlington County is at the forefront of an environmental trend that puts energy labels on county buildings. The Department of Environmental Services plans to label each building with energy efficiency information. The labels will be part of the county’s Community Energy Plan which hopes to make Arlington one of the leading counties in the reduction of greenhouse gasses. Arlington may have gotten the idea from the 2009 American Clean Energy and Security Act which included suggestions for building labeling, but died in the Senate. The plan will likely be implemented sometime this year but the details about what the label will look like and the information to be displayed are still undetermined. The goal of this program is to raise awareness about energy use and how to implement conservation. They also hope it will inspire private owners to apply energy labels on their own buildings. The labels may be similar to what the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, or the "Building EQ" label the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers produces. Arlington may also be taking cue from the practices Europe has put into place.

Next Tuesday is a busy day for anyone in the AEC industry involved in sustainable design projects. Here are two upcoming webcasts that provide insight on how to accelerate sustainable design projects and comply with federal energy performance standards: BIM Webcast: Accelerating Sustainable Design with BIM Improving Federal Energy Performance, Part 2

Energy modeling is a hot topic in new construction projects as well as building retrofit, renovation and facility management. Federal, state and local governments are not only holding private firm construction to higher green standards, but the public sector overall is getting increased pressure to obtain higher LEED ratings and to produce high-rating energy proficiency analysis. (Read more in our earlier article: GSA Moves to LEED Gold for All New Federal Buildings and Major Renovations) If you’re a stranger to energy modeling, green building, or sustainable design, here are three resources that can help bring you quickly up to speed on mandates, implementation tips, and future of sustainable buildings.

A recent article by a friend of ours, Caron Beesley, editor of [acronym] Online, discussing the innovative steps that the federal government is taking to overcome many of the challenges of “going green” and meet a range of fast-tracked mandates, has been getting a lot of great press lately. In Fast-Tracking A Greener Government – Meeting Those Mandates, Beesley noted that, as the largest consumer of energy in the U.S. economy, federal government energy efficiency projects have often been hampered by cumbersome infrastructure, regulatory hairballs, and energy upgrade limitations on buildings.

Autodesk recently announced the environmental impacts of Autodesk University (AU) 2010 – its popular annual user conference that attracts up to 30,000 participants each year. The results revealed that, even as the in-person attendance at the 2010 event in Las Vegas grew 16 percent from 2009, the carbon footprint was reduced by four percent over 2009.

Over the past several years, substantial regulation has been passed mandating the “greening” of federal government buildings. Last month was no exception and saw the declaration of a new “gold” standard. In late October 2010, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) issued a new mandate requiring that all federal building construction projects and “substantial” renovation projects achieve a minimum LEED Gold certification in their quest to improve energy efficiency. Leadership in Environmental Efficiency Design (LEED) is an internationally recognized and widely-accepted third party green building certification program, established by the U.S. Green Building Council, that determines the energy efficiency and sustainability of building projects.

Green building has been a hot topic for a while, but new building projects aren’t the only thing getting attention. In fact, according to the Green Building Retrofit & Renovation SmartMarket Report, only 1.5% - 2.5% of building stock in the U.S. is new each year. To add to that, green building comprises 5-9% of current building projects and that number is expected to increase to 25% -30% in the next five years. The report, found here, details data collected from market research and qualitative case studies (there are 20 highlighted in this report) showing the highly positive trend of green building projects, even in the government sector.

The Empire State Building in New York City is one of the most iconic modern buildings of our time. Built in 1930, the height of the building and speed of construction made it one of the seven wonders of the modern world. However, the engineers and architects of the 1930’s did not exactly consider such things as sustainability or carbon footprint.