In 1998 some design professionals from Boston met at a conference in California. They realized that, while they had never seen each other in Boston, they were all interested in integrating sustainable design into their mainstream practice. They found that many like-minded people were investing time and energy in developing redundant resources, and that everyone's efforts would be more effective if there was some coordination and proactive outreach across disciplines. A small group of people began meeting on their lunch hour to coordinate efforts and overcome the learning curve.
Over the course of a year, it became clear that there was a vacuum in this region that had to be filled, a demand for dialogue, expertise, and education. The Green Roundtable evolved from this group, and has stepped in to fill this vacuum by providing a forum for people from multiple disciplines to engage in proactive, effective dialogue around design and construction issues. What started as a few people getting together at lunch to share resources and lessons learned, evolved into the founding of the GRT as an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to the mainstreaming of sustainable design with a systematic approach implemented through an array of programs.
The original lunch group grew to 450 participants in the first year, and is now 3000 after only three years. Members come from every sector related to design, construction and post occupancy of the built environment. The GRT addresses the "disconnects" by coordinating the activities of all of the relevant stakeholders, and leveraging their independent expertise and activities into a more unified, coherent big picture.
The GRT is growing to fully meet the evolving needs of the community. We provide educational programs, design consulting, strategic planning, peer review, LEEDTM facilitation, assistance crafting RFPs, contracts and specifications, and other services.
Multi-disciplinary dialogue is crucial. Each one of us makes a drop of influence in the sea of design and construction. Each of our ripples intersects and determines the wave of the present, and future. Our success in creating a built environment that can sustain us depends on our ability to work together and develop effective solutions that are more than the sum of our individual efforts.