Green Goes Mainstream

When I wrote “Design-Build Methodology Well-Suited to Lead the Green Revolution,” in the October 2006 issue of DATELINE, I was optimistic about a bright green future for sustainable design. Yet even I am surprised at how quickly the future has arrived. Today, developers, corporations, public entities, and the general public have come to expect all types of building projects to incorporate green design and operations. In fact, market developments clearly indicate that sustainable design is quickly moving into the mainstream:

• According to McGraw-Hill Construction Analytics, the value of green building construction starts should exceed $12 billion in 2007.
• Leading engineering societies and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) are developing a new standard intended for inclusion into building codes.
• Some 55 cities, 11 counties, and 22 states are using the Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System to certify their publicly owned buildings, and dozens of cities are offering incentives to the private sector to encourage owners to build green. Green building consultants predict that, by 2009, approximately 20 to 25 percent of all new construction will be green.

This trend has given owners, designers, and contractors more options to utilize sustainable design principles. And because everything is so new and changing so fast, they are continually rethinking how to best integrate green design into their projects. These are positive developments for design-builders, whose collaborative approach to project planning and management is well suited for success in this fluid environment. As public demand for sustainable buildings intensifies, design-builders will have limitless opportunities to leverage their honed experience to great advantage, plus make important contributions in the fight against global warming.

Rapid Acceptance

Several environmental, social, and economic forces are accelerating marketplace acceptance of green building design. Environmentally, these buildings play a crucial role in lessening the impact of global warming, since they consume 39 percent of the annual energy in the United States and contribute 30 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions. (Energy consumption actually increases to more than 50 percent when construction, construction materials, and construction waste are included in the total calculations.) If half of our new commercial buildings used 50 percent less energy, carbon dioxide emissions could be cut by six million tons a year - the equivalent of taking one million cars off the road.

Since green buildings use key resources like energy and water much more efficiently, they save owners money by reducing their operations and maintenance expenses. They also improve occupants’ health, comfort, and productivity by providing more natural light and cleaner air. Study after study shows that, compared to standard buildings, well designed green buildings yield lower utility costs and greater employee productivity due to less absenteeism caused by asthma, allergies, and other illnesses aggravated by mold, stale air, and chemicals found in many conventional buildings.

This widespread appeal of green design is most dramatically evident in the phenomenal growth of the LEED Green Building Rating System. Since LEED for new construction was released in 2000, this voluntary certification program has registered or certified more than 1 billion square feet of commercial building space.

As a result of the increasing demand for LEED scoring methods, the USGBC has expanded its purview beyond new construction and renovations. LEED certification programs are, or soon will be, available for schools, homes, neighborhood development, commercial interior projects, new retail construction, building operations and maintenance, multiple buildings and on-campus building projects.

LEED might be even more widely used if many builders and owners did not mistakenly believe that it is cost prohibitive. Studies and reports by organizations such as California’s Sustainable Building Task Force, which included more than 40 California state government agencies, consistently confirm that:

• The average premium for LEED-designed buildings compared to code-compliant buildings is statistically insignificant.
• Most LEED projects are built without the need for additional funds.
• About three-fourths of the points needed for LEED certification are easily attained through sensible base design.

While LEED is the accepted standard for sustainable design, some owners and builders want to validate the “greenness” of their projects without paying the application and process fees associated with LEED certification, which can be as high as $40,000 to $60,000. A new, much more affordable alternative is called Green Globes, an online green management tool that includes an assessment protocol, rating system and guide for integrating environmentally friendly design into commercial buildings.

Developed in Canada and the United Kingdom, it is available in the United States through the Green Building Initiative (GBI), a non-profit, industry-supported education group that is in the process of establishing Green Globes as the first American national standard for commercial green building. The Green Globes Web site (www.greenglobes.com) features a self-assessment questionnaire that has about 90 percent of the criteria found in LEED programs and lets applicants measure the environmental performance of their buildings against best practices. This tool typically costs $250 per assessment and can be used several times during project development to verify that a building will achieve its sustainable design goals. GBI, whose goal is “Bringing Green into the Mainstream,” also facilitates recognition of these projects through third-party verification, after which a building can display and publicize its Green Globes certificate.

A Mandate, Not a Choice

As the mainstreaming of sustainable design gathers momentum, designers and builders are finding that “green” is fast becoming a requirement, not a choice, particularly in the public sector. Dozens of states and cities are looking to achieve a minimum LEED Silver rating for all publicly funded building projects and some, such as Scottsdale, Ariz., and Portland, Ore., are taking this a step further by mandating that their new municipal buildings meet LEED Gold standards.

In addition, many communities, such as Arlington, Va., Cincinnati, Ohio, and Gainesville, Fla., are offering incentives in the private sector to encourage owners to build green. These enticements include tax credits and exemptions, fast-track building permits, and density bonuses. Recently, Wight & Company’s LEED Gold design for a mixed-use condo project in Chicago became the first to qualify for the highest benefit level in the city’s Green Permit Program. As a reward, the city’s Department of Construction and Permits waived 100 percent of the permit consultant review fees.

Design-builders also should be aware of another pending development with far-reaching implications: the introduction of performance-based green measures in building codes. The most notable of these is Standard 189P, which is being developed by the American Society of Heating Radiation and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) in conjunction with the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) and the USGBC. Standard 189P will address key areas of performance including energy efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable site selection, water usage, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality. For example, it will require a minimum 25 percent reduction in energy use over current standards, and more important, will require that this level of performance is verified after construction is completed.

“Standard 189P will become the benchmark for all sustainable green buildings in the United States because it is being developed for inclusion into building codes,” according to the project’s committee chairperson John Hogan.

Now in its final stages of development, it is likely to be adopted by jurisdictions as performance standards in their building codes.

At the federal level, the Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Federal Environmental Executive and the Whole Building Design Guide, has developed the Federal Green Construction Guide for Specifiers. A draft section (01 43 50) was open for public comment until September of this year, and its guidelines may soon be required on all federal projects as well as be incorporated into many local codes.

Other organizations are pursuing development of similar kinds of sustainable building model codes, including the National Institute of Buildings Sciences, the Sustainable Building Industry Council, and the International Code Council. These and similar efforts will continually raise the bar on environmental responsibility for building design and construction.

The Integrated Design-Build Fit

A common fallacy among those unfamiliar with green buildings is that cost control is the number one challenge. In reality, experienced green designers know precisely what such projects will cost and can easily manage to these budgets if the project participants understand and address a much more critical issue: how to manage time in a different, better way. In the previously mentioned California report on 33 LEED certified buildings, the majority of cost premiums were caused by the increased architectural and engineering design time needed to integrate sustainable building practices into projects. Paradoxically, much of these added costs could have been avoided if the owners had spent more time in the pre-design planning stage clearly defining project goals and specifications.

“The thing about green buildings is that they are much more cost-effective if you do them as a whole rather than piecemeal,” says Greg Kats, a clean energy consultant and the lead author of the California study. “The key is to start very early, include everyone and make sustainable design part of the building’s DNA.”

Kats’ emphasis on the need for an integrated, front-loaded design process is not a revelation for design-builders, who have been leading the industry for years in promoting collaborative, early decision-making as a key to cost efficiency. This project management approach is especially applicable to sustainable design, since “glued-on” green (i.e., adding green elements in the middle of a project) is inefficient and costly. Let’s look more closely at how owners, designers, engineers, and contractors might work together to establish the scope, cost, and coordination of green building elements at the two earliest stages of the project.

Green Goals

In addition to determining space and function needs, this pre-design phase will set criteria for architectural and engineering systems and materials. On day one, the entire team should set their green goals, which often will include aiming to achieve either LEED Silver, Gold, or Platinum status or Green Globes recognition. This decision will be the basis for subsequent choices regarding site selection, building orientation, height, exterior envelope design criteria, energy modeling, and identification of local and/or renewable building materials.

At Wight & Company, for example, this kind of upfront due diligence (combined with the client’s steadfast commitment to its objectives) led to the successful development of the Evelyn Pease Tyner Interpretive Center, a new, zero-energy nature center in Glenview, Ill., one of the few buildings in the country to achieve LEED Platinum status.

Other advantages of a more conscientious initial planning phase include:

• Educating the owner about sustainable design and its lifecycle cost benefits, as most owners are unfamiliar with green buildings and look to the design-builder for information and guidance.
• Fostering the teamwork needed throughout the process and giving all parties a basic understanding of the project’s objectives and scope.
• Synthesizing numerous sustainable design elements into unified strategies that balance varying needs and help minimize or eliminate painful surprises.

Comprehensive Payback

This phase of an integrated design-build process for green buildings usually will increase the time to Guaranteed Maximum Pricing (GMP), primarily because it involves more frequent and intense interactions among the architect, engineers, and builder. Other activities, such as basic value engineering of major systems/materials and more detailed analyses in regards to energy modeling and site design should be completed in this phase rather than later in the process.

As a result, budgets allocated for this phase might be in the 20 to 25 percent range instead of the customary 10 to 15 percent. The overall payback from having a more comprehensive and accurate schematic design, however, will far outweigh any added expenses through such benefits as:

• Avoiding costly value engineering after construction documents are completed, which also can make it more difficult to achieve LEED certification goals.
• Improving pricing accuracy (e.g., by identifying the primary material palette, builders can verify availability and cost and make adjustments before the GMP).
• Reducing traditional design fees (usually about 15 to 20 percent) during the GMP process, since some of this work has already been completed.
• Shortening the construction document phase (again, many decisions already have been made).
• Eliminating surprises in the bidding phase.

Golden Opportunity

Green design has come a long way in just the last few years, and owners and designers now have many more cost-effective options for green certification and materials. Advances in sustainable design no doubt will accelerate, and many green practices will soon become generally accepted standards in building codes.

These inevitable changes offer a golden opportunity for design-builders. With a methodology that has long emphasized teamwork and front-loaded decision-making, they are well-prepared to help their clients address the most critical success factors of affordable sustainability: time management, collaborative goal-setting, and nailing down major details as early as possible. The mainstreaming of green design not only threatens to make standard buildings obsolete, but also could signal the death knell for the thread-worn design-bid-build process.