Portico Early Access Program
Healthy Building Network and Google Announce First-of-Its-Kind Building Materials Analysis and Decision-making Tool
Building Industry Leaders Perkins + Will, The Durst Organization, Harvard University,
Georgia Institute of Technology and HomeFree Affordable Housing Cohort Join As Founding Partners
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Los Angeles, CA (October 5, 2016) - Healthy Building Network, the green building movement’s leader in health and transparency, and Google today announced Portico, a web based application designed to simplify the analysis, selection and specification of building products that meet health and transparency objectives. Portico offers a unique service that allows the key participants in a building project such as owners, architects, contractors and manufacturers to collaborate, research and make actionable decisions on healthy building materials.
Read the full press release >>
What is Portico?
Portico is an online tool used for the selection and specification of healthy products and materials for the built environment. The web service integrates healthy materials evaluation and project management-related functionalities with an extensive product database. Owned by Healthy Building Network, Portico was created in partnership with Google Real Estate and Workplace Services (REWS) team. Portico leverages a 40,000+ Chemical and Material Library (from HBN’s Pharos Project) for health and environmental hazard screening, assessment and certification information. One of its key features is to screen and evaluate the healthfulness of selected building products through a built-in request-for-information process with manufacturers.
Who can use Portico?
Our vision is to open Portico for use by anyone involved in the design, construction and operation of healthy spaces. To enable this scale of use by the industry, HBN is seeking a small group of partners to join the Early Access Program, receive the benefits from the tool, and help evolve and expand Portico so that we are building up the platform that can meet a diverse needs and priorities based on the user.
What are the benefits of Portico for owners and operators?
Using Portico, owners and operators benefit by being able to define their healthy materials priorities and criteria at the beginning of a project and track progress against them in real time. Portico can be used by project teams to research and select materials quickly and, if necessary, to easily seek additional information from manufacturers all in one project management service. As a tool that enables the simplification of project management, product research and the selection of healthy building materials, Portico will ultimately allow large-scale owners and operators to articulate the value they place on health, which will drive more transparency and demand for healthier products in the building materials market.
What are the benefits of Portico for architects, designers and contractors?
Through Portico, architects, designers, and contractors are empowered with product information that is transparent, actionable and backed by scientific evidence and rigorous standards such as Health Product Declaration, GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals and Cradle to Cradle Certification. Whether the project is trying to eliminate a specific class of chemical compounds or striving to achieve a third party certification such Living Building Challenge, LEED or WELL, Portico provides information that is comparable and actionable throughout every phase of the project lifecycle. With built in functionalities to evaluate bids and approve substitution requests against a project’s healthy materials criteria, Portico is designed to integrate with the project workflow and milestones. Contractors and laborers will minimize chemical hazard exposures when healthier products are selected.
What are the benefits of Portico for manufacturers?
Portico enables a direct channel of communication between manufacturers and their customers. Manufacturers benefit from the ease with which they can share information about their products directly with owners, architects, and contractors through Portico. By entering product information within Portico, manufacturers are able to instantly share it with any number of users already using Portico, eliminating the need to duplicate efforts at multiple locations.
HomeFree is a nationwide healthy, affordable materials program created by Healthy Building Network with support from The JPB Foundation.
Healthy Building Network is seeking one to three additional Portico - Early Access Program (EAP) Partners
It is our goal to broaden the number and type of organizations that use Portico in the future in order to increase transparency in the area of building materials.
Register Your Interest In Becoming An EAP Partner
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