Copeland Building Envelope Consulting
We solve building envelope problems.
CopelandBEC recently provided technical and financial support for a team of students from the University of Minnesota competing in the national Solar Decathlon Collegiate Competition in Golden, Colorado. We’re thrilled to report that the UMN team came away with first place in the attached housing division and the grand prize of the entire residential division! Read the full results here.
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Over the past few months CopelandBEC has been working with students and faculty advisors from the University of Minnesota (UMN) Solar Decathlon team. The UMN team is competing in this nationwide event sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon is a collegiate competition that prepares the next generation of building professionals to design and build high-performance, low-carbon buildings powered by renewables.
U.S. Department of Energy
Based on the UMN team’s performance in the semifinals in February, they have now advanced to compete in the finals to be held April 20–23, 2023 in Golden, Colorado at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
We’re thrilled to have been able to play a small role in the UMN team’s project and wish them the best in Golden! Below are some renderings of the project building, courtesy of the UMN team.
As we roll into spring our WuXi Biologics project in Worcester is beginning to take its final form.
The fenestration and finish cladding are in progress and we continue to make regular site visits. We’re looking ahead to assisting with some QA/QC testing of various envelope assemblies over the next several months.
At CopelandBEC we’re big proponents of leveraging technology to improve our work, including improving flexibility and work-life balance for our team. Often that means we we’re connecting online via services like Slack Huddles or Google Meet conferences. Our team is empowered to work at whatever time and place is most effective to accomplish our goals.
Sometimes that still means meeting in person. Our sunlit industrial loft-style office in central Mass. is perfect for the kind of collaboration and connection that is best achieved face to face.
As you can see we’re not dogmatic about analog vs. digital media… as with most things the answer is “both/and” not “either/or”—we use whatever works best (and that can vary from person to person).
Read more about our approach to our work.
Designing commercial low-slope roofing to resist the forces imposed by wind is critical to the roof’s longevity. This is especially true in regions frequently impacted by high wind weather events.
The building code lays out the requirements for roof wind design. The short-and-simple version is this: