Session Description

ASHRAE is building off design minimums in Standards 62.1 and 55 toward verified performance of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), because better standards alone cannot guarantee better air. Standard 241 took a step, pairing clean-airflow targets with assessment and commissioning; ASHRAE’s IEQ Center of Excellence and proposed Standard 235P aim to integrate verification across IEQ domains. Verification depends on agreeing what to measure and how to evaluate it; through LEED v5 and a new metrics-harmonization initiative, USGBC is building consensus on which IAQ indicators matter, how much to monitor, and which claims data can support. The session makes the case for continuous monitoring and fault detection, exploring these efforts by ASHRAE and USGBC, and using Carnegie Mellon/GSA research showing that automated fault detection (AFD) and economizer tuning can both improve air quality and cut energy. It previews SHEAR, a Space, Health, Energy and Resilience framework that weighs O&M costs against performance, absenteeism, and energy savings to show the financial benefits of verification. **Light lunch (i.e., sandwiches) will be provided**

Learning objectives

After this session, participants will be able to:

1. Explain how ASHRAE is building toward verified performance through Standard 241, Standard 235P, and its IEQ Center of Excellence.

2. Make the case for automated fault detection (AFD), and understand research showing the benefits of prioritized fault correction and economizer tuning for IAQ and energy.

3. Set priorities for scarce maintenance resources from the bottom up with focused O&M actions, AFD, additional targeted IAQ monitoring, and quality control.

4. Understand the USGBC’s efforts to enhance IAQ monitoring through LEED v5 and to build consensus on what and how much to measure, and how to evaluate results.

5. Frame verification as a defensible investment by weighing the cost of operational fixes against energy, health, productivity, and resilience returns, using the SHEAR tool.

Speaker Bio

Brian Gilligan, P.E., has spent his career pushing to enhance health in buildings, and closing the gap between how healthy buildings are designed and how they actually perform. In 26 years as a federal civil servant, he turned health and workplace research into practice. At GSA, including as Deputy and Acting Director of the Office of Federal High-Performance Buildings, he led its Clean Air in Buildings Challenge work, initiated the Health in Buildings Roundtable with the National Academies, and steered Workplace 2030, an interagency effort redefining federal work. He co-authored research linking HVAC faults to indoor air quality and is developing SHEAR, a framework weighing the health, energy, and resilience returns of building investments. He retired from federal service in 2025 and now directs Facilities Maintenance and Operations at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He chairs the LEED Indoor Environmental Quality Technical Advisory Group and serves as a voting member on the new ASHRAE Standard 235P committee.