LONDON & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sefaira, a leader in energy efficiency software for building design, construction and management, today announced the public launch of Sefaira Concept - a new web application built to revolutionize the design of low and zero energy buildings.
Architects are challenged to design beautiful and refined buildings, while also meeting ambitious performance goals and tight budgets. They cannot effectively explore sustainable design options with current software, and the use of “rules of thumb” do not allow architects to uncover the best combination of energy efficient design strategies. When energy analysis happens only after major design choices have been made, the options are fewer and the costs of change higher. The result is lost opportunities for sustainability, energy efficiency and lower operational cost, and ultimately a compromised building design.
Sefaira Concept provides an intuitive, web-based sustainability analysis platform built specifically for conceptual design. The product enables architects and project teams to rapidly and iteratively explore design options, which leads to better performing buildings at a lower cost. The key features of Sefaira Concept include:
- Rapid energy modeling: Fast feedback on whole-building energy use, carbon emissions, and utility costs
- Integrated water analysis: Quickly investigate measures for water reduction, gray water reuse, and rainwater capture
- Renewable energy calculations: Test a wide range of renewable energy technologies to find the right ones for a building and site
- Explore the design space: Analyze multiple design options simultaneously, compare options side-by-side, and iterate through a number of variations
- Easy collaboration: Involve the entire project team early in design to harvest collective knowledge and expertise, check key assumptions, and explore design ideas
- Presentation-quality reports: Communicate design ideas and make the case for sustainable design strategies
“Sefaira Concept empowers designers to make better decisions from the earliest stages of design,” said Mads Jensen, CEO of Sefaira. “The building design and construction sectors have an important mission to reduce the energy consumption of buildings. Sefaira Concept supports true data driven design in the green building space and puts more analysis at a designer’s fingertips than ever before. This helps our users create high performing, economical and sustainable buildings, even given the current budget constraints within our industry”.
Over the past few months, Sefaira has been on-boarding more than 40 global customers through the Early Adopter Program (EAP). The customers span small, medium and large architectural and engineering firms, educational institutions, construction companies, building materials manufacturers and utility companies.
“I have been frustrated with existing green building software tools as they do not allow us to quickly iterate through multiple sustainable design options,” said Larry Barr, AIA, President at Quinn Evans Architects. “Sefaira’s visionary solution enables us to gain a competitive advantage, by allowing us to focus on those solutions that provide the most value to our clients.”
Asif Din, Director at ZEDfactory Ltd., added, “It is now practical to incorporate sustainability into conceptual design, reducing the complexity of producing zero fossil energy and zero carbon buildings.”
Sefaira will host a 30-minute webinar on Thursday, July 26th, 2012 at 11:00 AM U.S. Eastern Time to introduce Concept. To register for this webinar, visit the following link: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/319487742 .
About Sefaira
Sefaira was founded in 2009 with a mission to promote more sustainable buildings by helping the building industry design, build, operate, maintain and transform all facets of the built environment.
Sefaira’s proprietary cloud-based technology, built upon deep building physics expertise, offers an integrated approach to sustainable design analysis, knowledge management, and decision support. Sefaira helps designers analyze and compare sustainable building strategies for new build or retrofit projects in a fraction of the time and cost previously required. By providing sophisticated analysis via an intuitive web interface, Sefaira helps users define, quantify and optimize the energy, water, carbon and financial benefits of relevant design strategies.
Sefaira's offices in London and New York have supported projects across the US, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
For more information, please visit www.sefaira.com.