To help architects and other professionals make choices and take action, the Smart Enclosure System is broken into Three Tiers of performance. These tiers will provide a better understanding of how to make a more sustainable building.

The Three Tiers are not precise demarcations of success. Rather they indicate the direction of improvement relative to the other tiers and to the typical industry approach we describe as the Industry Standard High-Performance Default.

To provide an overview of how the Three Tiers work, we use common 2x stick and metal framing as reference points to compare to the industry default.