As I speak to members, HBA staff and other stakeholders all over the country about the progress we have made on the NAHB National Green Building Program, I like to remind them that Rome wasn’t built in a day — but we weren’t on that job.

In the last three weeks, I have spoken to builders in New Hampshire at the Area 1 Regional Caucus, to our HBA Executive Officers in Long Beach, Calif., at their annual meeting, to green builders and community leaders in Tucson, Ariz. and in Northern Illinois.

Meanwhile, the national staff has been inundated with questions and also with offers of help.  The dozens of HBAs, custom builders, production builders and local green building programs that have offered to serve as pilots for our new national program are a strong indication of the kind of support we are seeing for voluntary green building.  

The pilot programs will be announced at this week's NAHB Board of Directors meeting in Seattle, and they represent an excellent cross section of our membership — big and small HBAs, new and existing green building programs, custom and production builders. The pilots will begin Oct. 15. And the opportunity for the rest of our membership to take advantage of the NAHB National Green Building Program is just five months away!

As I explained in the last issue of the Green Building Program Update, the pilots will allow HBAs, builders and staff to examine both the online certification tool and the green home certification process itself, make tweaks and corrections, and be ready to launch in February 2008 at the International Builders' Show in Orlando.

The staff at the NAHB Research Center is also working on a manual for HBAs wishing to administer a local green building program. The manual, too, will be tested during the pilot process.

I'd like to thank the volunteer advisory groups working with the Research Center staff as the online certification tool is tested and vetted. It's painstaking, detail-oriented work, but I know the end result will be a user-friendly site that can also function as the public face of NAHB green builders, remodelers and developers. 

Want to hear more? Come to the Green Building Subcommittee meeting at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 6 in the Elliott Bay Room at the Westin Seattle. A detailed look at the program's progress begins at 5:00 p.m. Of course, if you can't be there, you'll get a report in the next edition of Nation's Building News and in this newsletter.

Thanks, as always, for your support!

Bob Jones