During the core and shell design development, a limitation was discovered in the number of input files that could be taken from the daylighting simulation and incorporated into the whole-building energy model. Although 22 files were developed to modify lighting schedules for typical RSF office spaces, only 4 could be added before the energy model code reached its maximum length. As a workaround, lighting files representing south perimeter and core spaces in both wings were used to model all those spaces, and the energy model's built-in daylighting controls were used for the north perimeter spaces in both wings. Layout and fixture changes in the electrical lighting design were incorporated into the energy model as they occurred. For the final round of energy modeling, seven lighting files were incorporated into the model as other schedules were combined.

Natural ventilation modeling analysis of the fitness center, connector wing, and information commons (library) was also performed in the core and shell design development, implementing the lessons learned in the preliminary modeling. The effectiveness of night purging was analyzed for different window arrangements to identify the best configuration of manual and automatic windows and their control for effective cooling. We found that natural ventilation would likely be ineffective in the connector wing, mainly because of high transient internal loads (for example, densely occupied conference rooms) relative to the amount of perimeter façade available for ventilation. Also, the full exterior building geometry (rather than that of a typical wing) was eventually included in the natural ventilation model to more realistically capture shading. The technique for quantifying the cooling savings for natural ventilation was changed from adjusting the thermostat set point on select days to post-processing cooling energy results on select days. The design team also tried to capture the influence of occupant behavior vis-a-vis window operation by halving the potential energy savings from natural ventilation to reflect the possibility that it would be suboptimal.