PATH Blazing

PATH - A Public Private Partnership for Advancing Housing Technology

[IMAGE: PATH Quarterly][IMAGE: arrow_sm]

Summer 2003

PATH Blazing

The Durability Doctor, one in a series of National Economic Service-life Tools (NEST), will provide homebuilders and buyers with information on the quality and cost of construction materials. This resource is both a library containing a vast collection of construction material information and a user-friendly tool to determine the value of specific products. Durability Doctor is a free service of PATH developed by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) and will be available soon on this Web site.

In early June, the Building and Fire Research Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Testing (NIST/BFRL) and PATH jointly hosted a workshop for invited industry leaders entitled "Measuring and Assessing the Consequences of Technology and Innovation for Affordability of Housing." Over the course of two days, the group discussed such topics as technology in owner-occupied housing, first costs and life-cycle costs of a technology, and the impact of economic incentives on the adoption of housing technologies. NIST will produce a PATH roadmap for affordability guideline development, based in large part on the workshop discussions. Publication is expected later this year.

The objective of PATH technology roadmapping is to identify technological research in homebuilding to serve as a guide for research investments by government and industry. A new roadmap is posted for review: " Whole-House and Building Process Redesign." The Whole-House roadmap includes significant changes from earlier versions based on comments received from a wide variety of participants. Send an email comment on this roadmap.

The PATH Industry Steering Committee (ISC) oversees the development of technology roadmaps and welcomes your comments.

Review and comment on other PATH roadmaps.

Content updated on 8/2/2004

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