The Enbridge Gas and Union Gas Savings by Design Program offers support and financial incentives to encourage builders of commercial and multi-residential developments to design their projects to achieve energy and environmental performance enhancements beyond the minimum requirements of the building code.

Sustainable Buildings Canada is the program delivery partner for the program and has facilitated over 600 workshops since the program’s inception. Our role is to organize and facilitate full-day workshops for program participants, and to work with them to develop a design specification that can achieve the program objectives.  The underlying principle of the workshop is the integrated design process (IDP), where all key stakeholders are engaged early in the process to review the design, discuss, and vet options, as well as collaboratively develop a revised design that meets the high performance goals.

SBC has developed an extensive roster of subject matter experts from the industry who participate in the workshop and provide participants with the opportunity to explore best practices, share experiences, and to push the boundaries of conventional design. While the rationale for the program design is energy performance, the workshop also considers other sustainability features indoor environment, accessibility, green infrastructure etc.