Cultivators use different approaches to retrofit and construct buildings and greenhouses to cultivate a variety of crops. Sometimes facility choices correlate with facility location, real estate prices, climate zone, crop, and final product. Each method has different pros and cons for businesses. Cultivators are motivated to grow in indoor farms and greenhouses to maximize profitability while minimizing operational expenses. Understand the key performance indicators and targets to guide producers and project teams during the design and construction phases, reduce energy use and operating costs for resilient facilities, and maximize incentives from your local utilities and efficiency programs.
Topical areas include:
Benefits of Indoor Controlled Environments for Crops
Assembling CEA Project Teams
The Value of Commissioning
Navigating Codes and Permits
Maximizing Technical Assistance for CEA Projects
Design and Construction Best Practices for Indoor Farms
Considerations for Indoor Enclosures and Vertical Farms
Benchmarking Design & Construction KPIs
Operations & Maintenance Planning
Target audience:
Cultivators
Operations & Facility Staff
Design & Construction Partners
Property Owners
Utility & Government Representatives
| Funded with support from: |  |
| California Efficient Yields: Facility Design & Construction Best Practices for Efficient Greenhouses and Vertical Farms (22.6 MB) | Download | ||
Brian is a founding partner of Anderson Porter Design, Inc., an international practice focused on design and architecture for the cannabis industry. Anderson Porter Design provides strategy, technology, design and thought leadership built on 20 years as a general practice in Architecture. Since 2014 they have focused on buildings for plants: Controlled-Environmental Horticulture (CEH), Extraction / Manufacturing and Retail Dispensaries.
Brian merges a RISD education in the craft tradition of making and designing objects with an analytic data driven process to drive value along the cannabis supply chain. He has a Masters degree from Harvard and has been in practice since 1992. Anderson provides professional leadership in strategic planning and design. He speaks nationally on energy sustainability in the Cannabis Industry, Facility Design, and on interior design for retail.
Anderson Porter Design were the architects for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston from 1999 – 2006. The events of 9/11 necessitated site and building security upgrades both physical and electronic. Anderson's specialty in building design for security includes a new vehicle inspection and site security measures for the FRB. The program included site upgrades and a new building for the inspection of all vehicles entering the underground garage capable of protecting the bank from a car or truck bomb. Anderson has further specialization in buildings with complex programs as architect with a team from Mumbai India for MIT’s Neuroscience Laboratory and architect for commercial medical device manufacturing facilities in Massachusetts. Anderson has extensive experience with public agencies and non-profit organizations. He brings over a decade of work with small business retail and interior design with both private and public clients.
Brian began working with cannabis clients in 2014. He is working with clients in various stages of state approvals process in MA, NJ, CO, OR, AR, OH, OK, MO, MI, VA, WVA, PA and FL.
Rob has over 30 years of experience in plant growth facility management, plant research and commercial production. At Purdue University, he brought online and managed a computer- controlled 40,000 ft 2 research facility, made up of 25 greenhouses and over 60 growth chambers and grow rooms. He was responsible for hundreds of CEA studies involving flowering, food and medicinal species. He served on design teams for greenhouse projects and one of the first automated machine-vision phenotyping centers in the country. In his consulting role, he supported major hydroponic produce growers AeroFarms and Bright Farms; Big Ag companies Dow AgroSciences, Novozymes and Indigo Ag; and several cannabis operations including Clade9. He wrote cultivation plans for cannabis licenses awarded in Missouri and West Virginia.
Rob’s protocols for optimizing greenhouse production have been downloaded over 70,000 times in 104 countries. He participated in the publication, A Practical Guide to Containment: Plant Biosafety in Research Greenhouses, recognized throughout the world as a primary resource for safe production of genetically modified crops. In 2016, he was a member of the International Committee for Controlled Environment Guidelines that published Guidelines for Measuring and Reporting Environmental Parameters for Experiments in Greenhouse Facilities, the seminal document of quality assurance protocols for plant science research.
In his free time, Rob enjoys gardening, growing microgreens under LEDs, baking and winning croquet matches against his three grown children.
