The White House’s Retrofit Ramp-Up program was announced yesterday, and it will pump $452 million into local communities to help make retrofits readily available to homeowners and businesses. 25 different communities around the country will receive grants. A full list of the grant amounts (which are subject to negotiation) and those areas receiving the money is available.

Evaluation tools for the built environment address many aspects of design and construction. From the LEED evaluation of sustainability to the defense assessment being developed by the Building Security Council of the American Society of Civil Engineers, programs provide measures of “success.” Add to these evaluation tools a new effort to evaluate the aspects of a socially, economically, and environmentally-healthy community.

Building information modeling (BIM) is becoming more popular in the construction industry for a bevy of reasons. According to Dennis Neeley of the AIA, one extremely attractive reason for BIM’s increase in popularity is the way developers can use it to attract investors to their project. Neeley believes that in ten years BIM will be expected and demanded by investors.