By Randall S. Newton
Editor-in-Chief
AEC SYSTEMS co-founder George Borkovich is one of the partners planning a new conference and exhibition for the AEC industry, this one focusing on the fast-growing “green building” market. Ecobuild America is scheduled to premiere June 20-23, 2005 in Orlando, Florida.
According to an announcement, Ecobuild America will focus on the needs of the expanding green building market by combining exhibits, seminars, and speakers to cover sustainable building techniques and the appropriate supportive technology that supports the entire process from concept, through design, construction and long-term operation.
Joining Borkovich as organizers of Ecobuild America are Richard C. Vendola, Jr., and Chris Gibson. The three have formed RCG Productions, LLC, to develop, manage, and promote Ecobuild America. Vendola is founder of Tradeshow Management Services, Ltd., an organization involved in trade show and conference development and production of events as large as 1,500 booths and 30,000 attendees. Vendola has 25 years experience developing and producing events such as Build Boston, Construction Technology, and the A/E/C SYSTEMS shows. Gibson is director of information technology events and head of Neocentrix, LLC, a marketing services and online consulting company. He has 10 years experience in the trade show and event arena. He is developer of RegConnection, an attendee lead tracking, data gathering, and online registration network. Gibson is a former director of global marketing services for Bentley Systems and was responsible for the development of the Bentley International User Conference.
Also joining the Ecobuild America team are architects Mark Kalin, FAIA, who will oversee the educational program, and Yoshiteru Kaneko, who will serve in an advisory capacity. Kalin is author of the original GreenSpec Specifications for Environmental Sustainability and R.S. Means’ Specifying Green Building Products. Kaneko is producer of Japan's largest AEC technology event, and creator of the successful Ecobuild Japan.
Ecobuild America will have a strong technology component, according to co-founder Borkovich. “Ecobuild America will highlight more efficient methods of designing sustainability into any project. This whole building approach considers the long-term operation and management of structures in a more environmentally and energy-saving way.”
The range of topics in the comprehensive educational program include: creating environmentally designed facilities, life cycle cost assessment of materials and systems, hardware and software tools for green design, building automation and control systems, green initiatives from Europe and Japan, using GIS in environmental design, lessons learned from the LEED certification process and recycling and reusing construction waste.
More information about Ecobuild America is available at www.ecobuildamerica.com.