Building Innovation 2020: Virtual Edition  

Sponsor: 

National Institute of Building Sciences

Date: 
08-18-2020 to 08-19-2020

There is no other place where everyone who impacts the built environment comes together to find solutions. This year, BI2020 is even bigger. Anyone within the building industry is invited to attend. Sessions will cover a spectrum of developments in the areas of workforce, technology, resilience, and the challenges that COVID-19 brings to the built environment. Topics include:

RESILIENCE: NIBS and the American Institute of Architects define resiliency as the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events. Disasters are expensive, but most destruction can be prevented with cost-effective mitigation and advanced planning. New and existing practices must be developed or changed through research, advocacy, and education. A special focus will be placed on ensuring the resilience of the nation’s building stock, covering topics in the built environment relating to resilience due to climate change, natural hazard risks, and sustainability efforts.

TECHNOLOGY: New and advanced technologies rapidly are developed and deployed across the building industry, with major potential shifts in how the industry conducts day-to-day business. In addition to research and development into new technologies, the industry must be prepared for how these technologies will be adopted and utilized. NIBS is working to prepare the industry for new opportunities, as well as promote advanced, efficient, and safe structures. Building Innovation 2020 will showcase these advanced technologies and practices and highlight how the industry can best prepare for their adoption and deployment.

WORKFORCE: The building industry faces many workforce challenges, from skills gaps to labor shortages. Today’s building workforce requires unprecedented technological, social, cultural, political, and economic savvy -- all at a time when fewer individuals are entering the trades industry. Through various projects and its councils and committees, NIBS is working to address head-on these challenges. Activities in this space include showcasing career opportunities in the building industry; supporting better credentials and reducing uncertainty in the credentialing space; and, supporting continuing education and retraining opportunities for trades workers. Building Innovation 2020 will highlight this critical challenge for the industry, as well as opportunities for advancing the building workforce to meet 21st century needs.