When it comes to selecting the best products for your green building projects, finding complete, credible information can be challenging and time consuming. SPOT is an innovative, trusted free resource for comprehensive information on sustainable product attributes. Developed by environmental division of UL (Underwriters Laboratories), a trusted global safety science organization since 1894, SPOT is recognized as an official data partner for the U.S. Green Buidling Council’s LEED rating system.
SPOT was first launched in October 2016 as a web-based product sustainability information tool, that facilitates the selection of credible green products and enable the design community to apply that information into the Building Information Modeling (BIM) workflow.
The first of its kind, UL’s SPOT add-in for Revit was made available just a few months later to download from Autodesk App Store. This application enables architects and designers to access product data from SPOT and assign it directly to their project.
This gives them a quick and easy way to insert credible green product information directly into their Revit project, while improving accuracy in reporting to the major global green building rating schemes.
After less than two years SPOT database is today the first of its kind tool for architects, designers and specifiers to identify products by sustainable attributes, MasterFormat product codes and building rating system credits such as LEED v4, BREEAM, and the WELL Building Standard.
The journey continues with SPOT’s evolution including major enhancements for an overall better search experience, product listings from more certification organizations, more features for users, and new applications for BIM to help automate the product selection process even more.
From its launch, SPOT has received a series of relevant recognitions, such as being linked to the US GSA and DOD (Department of Defense) procurement sites, the recent collaboration with the USGBC (U.S. Green Building Council) to help Architects and Designers find products that contribute to LEED v4 and v4.1criteria. As well as numerous agreements with credible data partners, such as with CRI for Green Label Plus Certified Carpet Products, with SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative) for certified products and with Green Electronics Council’s for EPEAT registered products, to mention a few.
By creating a SPOT account for free, users gain access to special features that make it easier for them to identify and access products and information for their design and building projects.
Each SPOT account includes unique key features, including: saved product searches to quickly find products, tagging to save custom notes about products, bookmarks for products to return to products quickly, and the newly introduced feature “My Projects”.
My Projects helps architects and designers create custom project boards and connect with team members in a virtual workspace.
Finally, numbers support that SPOT is really the first its kind tool and the most credible source for sustainable products currently in the global marketplace. Just think that SPOT today counts close to 8,000 global registered users, 18,700 average monthly unique visitors, 1,168 new registrations per quarter, over 55,000 families of products available for search, over 54 product categories and 35 sustainable criteria.
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