The United States General Services Administration released updated standards for federal buildings. The 2024 P100 Facilities Standards for the Public Buildings Service establish mandatory design and construction standards and performance criteria for 300,000 federal buildings nationwide. The updated standards will help advance the adoption of cleaner, more efficient technologies for buildings; lead the way towards realizing the goals of the Federal Sustainability Plan to achieve net-zero emissions from all federal buildings by 2045; and promote the use of U.S.-made, low-carbon construction materials.
Updated and published every three years, the 2024 P100 establishes exceptional benchmarks for:
- Electrification: New standards for building equipment and systems to be powered by clean energy sources.
- Embodied carbon: Requirement to utilize low-embodied carbon materials, including salvaged, reused, regenerative, and biomimetic options.
- Energy efficiency: Enhanced building envelope performance to minimize energy loss and improve overall efficiency.
- Grid-interactive efficient buildings: New measures to support a more resilient, responsive grid.
- Water reuse: Mandating that buildings have a 15% potable water reuse rate.
- Construction decarbonization: Ground breaking new low-carbon methods for constructing federal buildings including clean energy operations, material salvage, and offsite assemblage.
- Labor practices: New standards protecting workers from unfair or unsafe labor practices, ensuring supply chains are free from child and forced labor and that workers are protected from the impacts of extreme heat.
In particular, the document covers fall protection through window glass, seismic glass breakage and damage, glass fragmentation protection, thermal performance of double- and triple-pane glass, insulated glass installed in historic sashes, glass design for sloped glazing and skylights, fire-rated glass assemblies, heat-treated flat glass in entrances, bird-safe glass, and more.
The National Glass Association's Best Practices for Bird-Friendly Glazing Design is referenced under the section on bird-safe building design.
