Health Product Declaration® Collaborative Launches Material Health ToolSuite™

Accelerating Material Health Practice in the Building Industry

WAKEFIELD, MA, USA, May 2, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ — In a move set to accelerate material health practice into the mainstream of building design, Health Product Declaration Collaborative (HPDC) today announced the launch of Material Health ToolSuite™. New capabilities – HPD PreCheck and HPD Dashboards – automate the previously time-consuming tasks of detailed material health evaluation of building products and put advanced capabilities in the hands of even a novice user.

Material Health ToolSuite (MHT) integrates these new capabilities with the widely used HPD Open Standard, HPD Builder, and HPD Public Repository. Connected with HPD Data Partners’ product libraries, research, and workflow tools, MHT supports a comprehensive, ecosystem-connected set of material health reporting, analysis, and evaluation capabilities for manufacturers and project teams, enabling a confident response to the growing market demand for healthier buildings.

Typically, project teams need to evaluate a minimum of three products for every one selected for a building project. Scaling material health evaluation to the hundreds of products used on a full project can add many hours to the project design phase and has put material health evaluation out of reach for most projects, due to time and budget constraints. MHT addresses this issue by reducing evaluation time from hours to minutes.

“At Bora, using material health information to inform specification decisions is a priority,” commented Mike Manzi, RA, CCS, Associate Principal, Bora Architecture and Interiors. “MHT will dramatically reduce the time required to access and understand this information, so it is immediately useful in making product selection decisions during any phase of a project. This is a big win for our project teams, our clients, and our collective ability to specify building products that are better for people and the environment.”

Making these capabilities even more convenient for project teams, HPD reports, digital data, and HPD PreCheck results can be accessed in many popular building product libraries and design project workflow tools using HPD Data Partners capabilities.

“Selecting and specifying building products requires researching and balancing a wide variety of factors,” commented Lona Rerick, AIA, Principal, ZGF Architects. “Material Health ToolSuite makes it easy and efficient to quickly perform material health evaluations in the HPD Public Repository. The promise of these evaluations seamlessly connecting to the various product library and project workflow tools we use is game-changing. Setting criteria for automated HPD reviews which are digitally connected to where we work will save time, reduce errors, and most importantly, allow us to apply healthier materials criteria in our typical project work. ”

The comprehensive tools of Material Health ToolSuite include:

HPD Open Standard
• The foundation of the MHT, ensuring accurate, reliable, and consistent reporting of manufacturer product-specific data, with options for Third-Party Preparation and Validation. Over 40,000 building products already have published Health Product Declarations (HPDs) using the HPD Open Standard, the most widely used material health methodology in the building industry.

HPD Public Repository
• HPD Archive contains all published HPDs, with free public access. With 13,000 published reports representing over 40,000 building products, HPD Public Repository is the leading resource for material health product information in the built environment.
• HPD Dashboards (NEW) provide users with a workspace tailored to their unique needs, facilitating faster and more directed access to information crucial for decision-making. Custom Filtering Options allow for even more granular searches, enabling designers to pinpoint exactly the products needed to achieve their specific material health goals.
• HPD Download Queue (NEW) provides a one-click export of selected HPD reports. HPD Data Partners can import pre-selected products into workflow and product library tools. It also provides the concise documentation package needed for certification submissions.

HPD Builder
• HPD Builder Reporting provides an expert data entry system to support the reporting of material health data and publishing of HPD reports by manufacturers. Third-Party Preparers and Third-Party Verifiers also use these capabilities to support their manufacturer clients.

HPD PreCheck (NEW)
• HPD Repository PreCheck (NEW) empowers professionals to evaluate building materials effortlessly against detailed material health criteria from participating certification and project-specific programs. When implemented with customized HPD Dashboards, finding products that have both an HPD report and meet a project’s specific material health requirements can now be accomplished by any project team member in just a few minutes.
• HPD Builder PreCheck (NEW) in the HPD Builder provides tools for project teams and manufacturers to effectively communicate about custom material health requirements and to support manufacturers in quickly assessing and communicating how their products’ material health performance aligns with project team criteria.

HPD Data Partners
• HPD APIs (Application Programming Interface) enable the automated transfer of authenticated HPD-reported data with leading supply chain management, building product library, design project workflow, and research tools provided by qualified third-party data partners.

“The new features and integration of Material Health ToolSuite arrive at a crucial moment, where designers, architects, and specifiers need a step-function improvement in the efficiency and capabilities of material health data sources and decision-making tools to meet the growing demand for sustainable, healthy spaces,” said Wendy Vittori, HPDC Executive Director. “MHT meets this need. Working with our data partners and our material health community of practice, we will continue to evolve these capabilities so that better material health can be achieved with ease and precision for every product and on every project.”

With the introduction of Material Health ToolSuite, HPDC continues to make the HPD Open Standard and all published HPD reports freely available to the public via the HPD Repository Archive. HPDC members have free access to all additional and new capabilities of MHT as an included member benefit. HPDC members provide the essential ongoing support needed for the development of MHT and all aspects of HPDC’s work, through their membership dues, sponsorships and volunteer contributions. Affordable Individual Practitioner and Organizational HPDC memberships are open to all. To learn more about Material Health ToolSuite, attend our upcoming webinar or visit the HPDC Website. Register for the Material Health ToolSuite Introductory Webinar.

Jeff Toffoli
Health Product Declaration Collaborative
jtoffoli@hpd-collaborative.org