LATICRETE joins forces with SmartBIM ecoScorecard.com

LATICRETE currently has 50 products on the ecoScorecard website

By Pat Spadafore

LATICRETE, a manufacturer of globally proven construction solutions for the building industry, now utilizes SmartBIM ecoScorecard™, a database of web-based, manufacturer specific micro sites that help architects and designers search, evaluate and document environmental impact of building products and materials against the LEED, CHPS, Green Guide for Health Care, and National Green Building Standard systems.

“We decided to partner with ecoScorecard as their system has some excellent features and benefits that enhance our internal LATICRETE LEED Project Certification Assistant program,” said Sean Boyle, LATICRETE Director of Marketing and Product Management. “Our customers can save time and money with ecoScorecard as it is able to calculate cost-savings on a LEED project, by product which is a tremendous benefit to those submitting projects for LEED certification.”

LATICRETE currently has 50 products on the ecoScorecard website according to Mitch Hawkins, Technical Services Manager at LATICRETE. “A great deal of the LEED process is based on calculations,” explained Hawkins. “How much a product costs, and the value of each product as compared to the total cost, how much recycled content is in the product(s), and the cost of that in relation to the total cost.”

“With ecoScorecard, a customer selects the product(s) they are purchasing, as well as the quantity and cost of each product. The user then chooses the rating system that will be used for the project (i.e. LEED 2009, LEED v4, Green Guide for Health Care, etc...) and inputs the zip code where the project is located. ecoScorecard takes all of the provided information and generates a Project Contribution Summary which provides required information for the specific points to which the chosen products contribute.”

The new partnership with ecoScorecard is in addition to the company’s current LEED Project Certification Assistant program the company offers on its website, www.laticrete.com. “When using our current LEED Project Certification Assistant system, we can’t calculate cost because we don’t know the price the customer paid for the product. This means that someone else has to take all our information and do all the calculations,” said Hawkins. “Instead of going through the time and trouble of gathering all the information and doing all the calculations, all they have to do is enter the necessary information, press a button and then download the pdf version of the Project Contribution Summary. This document is then turned over to the LEED Accredited Professional (or other authority) for inclusion in the LEED package to be provided to the USGBC. This system does all the calculations for them and makes their life much, much easier.”

Hawkins also set up direct links within the ecoScorecard program to general UL GREENGUARD certificates as well as and Health Product Declarations (HPD) for inclusion in LEED v4 projects.

“This is a service that we provide and in our industry, if we can save an architectural firm time and effort by providing fast and accurate information, then they may be more willing to include our products in their projects,” said Hawkins. “That is why we have other tools, like the LATICRETE Architectural Guidebook, which creates specifications for them based on the Tile Council of North America (TCNA) methods, so they don’t have to task an associate or hire an outside vendor to create the specification. They have what they need with a few clicks of the mouse.”