One of the first steps that a project team must take in order to reduce the energy consumption of a building is to design the project with energy goals in mind. These energy-saving benchmarks are defined in our latest infographic “Owner's Project Requirements (OPR)”. The project requirements outlined in the OPR infographic will serve as the reference points for all design, construction, and ongoing maintenance operations.

LEED v4^™ identifies seven impact categories that define the environmental issues that LEED® projects are tasked with addressing. The categories are focused on the overall themes of climate change, human health, water resources, biodiversity, material resources, a greener economy, and community. LEED® uses these impact categories as a performance-based framework. This framework, consisting of prerequisites and credits, is used by the building industry in the project accreditation process.

The budget cycle is the period of time between one budget and the next. It involves a series of steps that form a cycle.

The budget cycle involves the creation of the budget, its validation (by testing current versus expected performance), the examination of variances (actual versus budget performance), the implementation of any corrective actions, and the revision of the budget based on feedback.

Your employees will look to management for guidance on how they are expected to accomplish given goals. You will be called upon to decide the order or priority of tasks, the individuals responsible for completing them, the manner in which they are to be performed, and the tools that will be used to measure progress.

Managers must consider a number of factors when setting schedules and assigning work tasks, including the skill levels and experience of workers and how well a given set of employees work together. Flexibility is key when dealing with unanticipated scheduling problems.

Negotiations occur in many different settings. We negotiate with family members, friends, and business associates. Negotiations happen so frequently that we often don't even realize when they occur.  Negotiations occur because people value things differently. 

People are not born with negotiation skills. They must be learned. We engage in many informal negotiations every day; however, in a business setting, more formal negotiations occur. In fact, negotiation is the norm for high value transactions.

We have seen that there are many factors at play in shaping behavior in the workplace. Nonetheless, the question remains: How is it that decent people can behave in an unethical manner in business?

Research suggests a number of reasons. The KPMG Forensic Survey polled a representative sample of American workers and found that pressure for results was the most often cited reason for misconduct. Another interesting finding from the KPMG survey was that only 34% of respondents said a desire for personal gain prompted unethical behavior.