Delivered in partnership with the Rainscreen Association in North America (RAiNA), the live virtual sessions ran from fall 2023 through spring 2024. The response was strong: 3,340 session attendees from 25 countries, including architects, designers, engineers, tradespeople, manufacturers, developers, government professionals, and students. A total of 1,791 individuals participated, with 257 attending more than one session. Industry professionals’ satisfaction rating for this series was 4.6 out of 5.
Throughout this foundational series, three of RDH’s building science specialists—Graham Finch, John Straube, and Daniel Haaland—explored typical components and performance attributes of a rainscreen wall. By sharing their research-backed recommendations, real-world examples, and practical application guidance, our specialists provided attendees with the fundamental information that building professionals need to successfully apply a rainscreen design approach to their projects.
Each session in the series featured a specific component or function of a rainscreen wall assembly, allowing attendees to choose to participate in just one or as many sessions as they wished. Most attendees were architects, designers, and engineers, with others representing various sectors of the building industry, including contractors and tradespersons, representatives from manufacturing and industry associations, building developers and owners, government employees, students, and other interested individuals.
We provided attendees of each session with the opportunity to earn continuing education credits for four professional industry organizations: AIA, AIBC, EPP, and Phius. We also issued a completion certificate to each attendee, allowing them to self-report their attendance to other organizations. The sessions were well attended and well received, as demonstrated in the table below:
To keep the Deep Dive into Rainscreens series accessible as a “Rainscreens 101” resource, RDH made recordings of all eight sessions available in our free online technical library at https://www.rdh.com/technical-library/.
This initiative reflects the ongoing success of RDH’s longstanding partnership with the nonprofit RAiNA. By contributing our specialized building science expertise, we help advance RAiNA’s vision: promoting performance-driven rainscreen assemblies that support more durable, resilient, healthy, energy-efficient, and safe buildings.
