Tony Sease of Civitech is CNU representative

Tony Sease of Civitech in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is serving as the CNU’s representative on the Governing Assembly of PERSI, a new organization whose full name is Practices, Education and Research for Sustainable Infrastructure. Formally established in January, PERSI is aimed, Sease says, at insuring “exchange of information, research, and practices across disciplines and organizations affecting all scales of infrastructure systems.” Participation by CNU and the American Planning Association has influenced PERSI to include land use and master planning in its discussions. “PERSI is now in the process of establishing technical committees, and we would like to see as much participation by CNU members as possible,” says Sease, who can be reached by e-mail at tony@civitech.com. The organization’s website is www.persi.us. Doug Farr of Farr Associates in Chicago, who represents the American Institute of Architects in PERSI, has mixed feelings about the new organization, which he says has a byzantine structure. PERSI has “no plans to write anything like LEED for Infrastructure,” he notes. “Honestly, we need to be a part of it,” Farr says. “But the lack of goals for this mammoth undertaking scares me. Remember that LEED-ND had a very specific goal and it still took us three years to a pilot draft and will be five years plus overall.”