The strategic planning process charts the course for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Building America program's efforts to widely deploy new integrated packages of energy-saving measures in new and existing homes. These living documents give an overview of Building America's research approach to evaluate specific building system options for reliability, cost-effectiveness, and marketability. Here you can learn more by reading strategic planning reports for specific research areas.

Standing Technical Committees

The Building America program actively engages all relevant industry stakeholders in the research planning process, primarily through Standing Technical Committees (STCs). STCs focus on identifying and resolving key technical issues required to meet Building America program goals.

STC chairs lead each committee's activities in addressing specific research challenges, gaps in understanding, and new research opportunities. Committees include experts from DOE, the Building America research teams, national laboratories, and industry organizations that offer specialized knowledge in the topics being addressed.

Each STC Strategic Plan is a living document maintained by the committee chair who coordinates input and review by the committee. These documents are updated based on feedback received at the three annual Building America meetings (technical, stakeholder and planning). In addition to clearly communicating and prioritizing current gaps (or market needs) and barriers, each report serves as an archive of research results that inform all ongoing Building America efforts. Each report includes:

  • Summary and prioritization of gaps and barriers
  • Key customers and stakeholders, their priorities and desired deliverable timelines
  • Background knowledge related to each gap or barrier
  • Summary of system interactions and relationships specific to each gap or barrier
  • Ongoing and planned Building America, DOE, industry and/or academic research activities related to each gap or barrier and to which customers or stakeholders the research is targeted
  • Summary of how success is defined relative to the goals of research activities
  • The research path, including approaches to collect data from market leaders, the timeline and milestones to resolve the gap, barrier or need.

The STC Strategic Plan summary reports are not intended to be a compendium of all available knowledge.

Strategic Plan Drafts

Read draft copies of the Strategic Plan summary report for each research need (updated as of February 2012):