Becoming an Enterprise Green Community

SWA has a deep and long-term commitment to bringing high performance building practices to the affordable housing industry. In support of this commitment, SWA works closely with affordable housing builders, developers, designers and lenders to identify the most cost effective, energy efficient and sustainable design and operations strategies. SWA is an active Technical Assistance partner to Enterprise Community Partners, creators of the Green Communities Criteria and accompanying certification program for healthy, efficient, environmentally smart affordable homes. To support certification under Green Communities, SWA provides design charrettes, energy modeling, and active testing of buildings and systems. Multifamily projects as well as community-scale single-family home projects may qualify, and many projects seek dual certification under ENERGY STAR® or LEED®.

To help promote green building education among their constituents, Enterprise Green Communities provides training tools and templates geared toward stakeholders, including residents, housing staff, and property managers. Many of these tools were developed by SWA in conjunction with several other firms to help ensure that green buildings continue to deliver superior performance beyond the ribbon cutting. Resident “Training in a Box” offers four educational workshops to residents and Green Operations & Maintenance for management and maintenance staff. For management teams, SWA provides an additional module on how to formulate a full green operations and maintenance plan specific to their needs.