Your building’s long-term value depends on how well it performs, on day one and every day after. Our building science services help developers and asset owners create buildings that are energy-efficient, comfortable, quiet, and resilient. Whether you’re designing new or upgrading existing assets, our engineering insights help unlock efficiency, reduce operating costs, and enhance the occupant experience.
We turn building science into better buildings. With deep expertise and advanced modeling tools, we deliver tailored solutions that power performance, whether you’re building new, retrofitting, or renovating.
Understanding how your building interacts with sunlight is key to unlocking better building design. Our solar analyses help you meet code, reduce environmental impact, and protect surrounding properties, all while enhancing comfort and efficiency.
We help you strike the right balance between daylight, views, and solar heat gain, eliminate glare risks, and optimize solar energy strategies—whether rooftop, ground-mounted, or building-integrated.
Maximize sunlight, minimize risk, and unlock new opportunities for performance.
Speak with a solar expertStack effect is caused by differences between indoor and outdoor temperatures. This phenomenon can lead to a range of problems, including whistling noises, slamming or hard-to-open doors, odor migration, uncomfortable drafts, frequent elevator malfunctions, and significant energy loss due to escaping conditioned air.
In tall buildings or those with leaky envelopes, these issues quickly escalate, undermining comfort, efficiency, and user experience.
Our experts identify and mitigate stack effect early, whether you’re designing a new tower or upgrading an existing asset. With the right strategies, you can maintain control, protect performance, and ensure your building works as it should year-round.
Speak with a stack effect expertVentilation systems do more than move air. They shape how a building feels, functions, and performs.
Effective ventilation provides thermal comfort through heating and cooling. It ensures fresh, odor-free air with the right balance of filtration and outdoor air exchange. In critical environments like hospitals, labs, and industrial spaces, it plays a vital role in controlling contaminants and protecting occupant health.
No matter the setting, a high-performance ventilation system must balance comfort, safety, and indoor air quality with energy efficiency.
We help you design systems that meet demands, enhancing value for both users and owners.
Speak with a ventilation expertFrom the earliest planning phases to detailed engineering execution, we help developers, designers, and asset owners optimize building performance at every level. We bring deep technical expertise not only in ventilation, stack effect, and solar studies but also in sustainability, acoustics, facades, rain and snow management, structural dynamics, and urban microclimates. We ensure each project is resilient, efficient, and built for people.
We’ve delivered tailored solutions for both new construction and major retrofits—whether guiding net-zero strategies, designing acoustics for comfort and clarity, engineering durable façades, or preventing costly impacts from rain, snow, and ice.
Our building science experts bring deep technical knowledge and proven modeling tools to optimize your project for energy use, comfort, and indoor air quality. We help you meet and exceed performance expectations, not just for initial occupancy, but across the life of your asset.
Design spaces people want to be in, functional, comfortable, and tailored to how they live and work. Whether you’re planning a corporate campus, residential tower, or institutional space, occupant experience matters. We help you fine-tune indoor conditions to support wellness, focus, and satisfaction through holistic and tailored solutions from advanced thermal comfort and daylighting to ventilation strategies, and more.
Design with climate in mind, to reduce mechanical loads and extend long-term performance. Future-ready buildings start with thoughtful design. We work with you to create building systems that align with local climate conditions, minimize energy use, and resist degradation. The result is buildings that stand up to the elements, protect your investment, and perform reliably over time.
Engineer smarter air movement to reduce risk and elevate safety. We help you safeguard occupants with high-performance ventilation schemes that effectively address smoke and particulate control, accidental chemical releases, and airborne pathogens.
Go beyond the basics with science-driven solutions that balance performance, cost and carbon. High-performance spaces demand more than code compliance. Our team uses precision modeling to develop targeted ventilation and comfort strategies tailored to your building type and use. The result is optimized performance without compromising budgets or sustainability goals.
Still have questions? Contact us.
Our building science services encompass a holistic range of engineering solutions aimed at optimizing how buildings perform, feel, and endure over time. These services address everything from energy efficiency and occupant comfort to structural resilience and environmental impact. Typical building science services include:
These services can be applied at any project stage, from early planning and design through construction and retrofit.
Natural ventilation takes advantage of a building’s climate and aerodynamics to provide outdoor air indoors without the need for fans, heating, cooling, etc. which reduces carbon emissions and can improve the occupant experience.
Mechanical ventilation brings in outdoor air in a more centralized way, it is filtered, conditioned (i.e. warmed, cooled, dehumidified, etc.) using mechanical means and then distributed via fans, ducts and diffusers.
Both approaches have their pros and cons. For example, while natural ventilation reduces carbon emissions, in many climates, the outdoor conditions are only comfortable during part of the year and the cleanliness can be impacted by cars, wildfires and exhausts from neighboring buildings. Conversely, mechanical ventilation schemes can provide more consistent indoor conditions (if well designed), but require more energy, and upkeep, and in the event of a power failure they won’t work at all.
RWDI’s deep experience allows us to understand these complexities to help our clients meet their goals.
Most importantly, ventilation strategies must be consistent with the need.
Some spaces are focused on the general comfort of a space and thus are good targets for natural ventilation. In others, the goal is to strictly control indoor conditions so that sensitive materials or equipment are not adversely impacted. Special applications (e.g., laboratories, data centres, smoke control systems) add even more stringent requirements, such as managing contaminant spills and maintaining visibility for first responders. Often, how the air is introduced into a space can sometimes be more important than how much. A thoughtful ventilation design is one that limits the energy needed by locating supply and exhaust points that work synergistically with the use of the space.
At the 2026 ASHRAE Annual Conference, RWDI highlights how CFD modelling improves external airflow design and cooling performance in high-density…
Key takeaways from RWDI's ASHRAE 2026 presentation on designing cooler, more comfortable, and climate-resilient outdoor spaces.
As FIFA 2026 mandates natural turf, stadiums face new challenges in airflow, sunlight, and environmental performance.
