The U.S. Army is one of the largest design and construction customers in the world. With more than 76 million residential units and almost five million commercial buildings, it also holds almost all of its buildings through the entire lifecycle of the structure. Since 2000, the Army has focused on incorporating sustainable design and development programs into all of its design and construction efforts. In 2006, the Army adopted the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) LEED rating system as the methodology to achieve its sustainability goals. The Army has set as its standard that all projects will be capable of achieving a Silver rating.
In 2000 the Army established the Sustainable Project Rating Tool (SPiRiT). Modeled on the LEED system ? with a point system that evaluated a project in the same major areas of LEED: site development, water efficiency, etc. - SPiRiT went further and added two other forward-thinking evaluation criteria: Current Missions and Future Missions. The Future Missions criterion was particularly innovative, as it challenged designers and constructors to think about a project not only in terms of meeting the current owner requirements but how this structure could be adapted to meet future needs. This gets at the true heart of recycling: reusing entire structures thereby avoiding the need to build on green space or consume all of the additional resources required in a new structure or facility.
SPiRiT ratings were never implemented as a hard and fast requirement of Army building. There were guidelines and recommendations that all new vertical construction reach the SPiRiT Gold standard. There were several projects across the country that were constructed that met several of the SPiRiT guidelines, and there were some other modest successes. However, the overall impact of the SPiRiT program was not as significant as the Army had initially hoped.
By 2006, the federal government owned seven percent of all LEED projects. In the four years since the introduction of SPiRiT, the LEED rating system had progressed to become the widely accepted sustainable standard across the AEC industry. Therefore, in 2006 the Army formally ceased the SPiRiT program and adopted LEED Silver-NC as the standard for all new construction beginning in fiscal year 2008. In particular, the Army stipulated that all design-build requests for proposals would have a LEED-based sustainability analysis requirement. The Army also pledged to adopt LEED for Homes for residential construction. In an attempt to control costs, the Army also decided that its projects would not be submitted to the USGBC for certification.
From SPiRiT to Strategy
The requirement that has been adopted into a large portion of the Armyfs RFPs this year includes a LEED Strategy for each project. The LEED Strategy is a checklist that evaluates each possible LEED point as it relates to the individual project and installation. It then assigns each possible credit a rating: "required," "preferred" or "avoid." A design-builder's proposal must achieve the required points; generally these points revolve around mechanical systems and sustainable construction operations. The preferred points express to the design-builder the owner's intent for sustainable design. These generally are the less expensive credits and are easier to support on a military installation. For example, almost all military installations have bus services, and therefore Credit SS4.1 Alternative Transportation: Public Transportation Access is relatively easy for most Army projects to achieve. On the other hand, the Army has chosen to avoid the EA3 Credit Enhanced Commissioning, primarily due to cost.
Today's Proposal Process
As this is the first fiscal year under the new system, Lifecycle Construction has been implementing the new sustainability requirements into the proposal process. The owner-provided LEED Strategy is a great tool in communicating owner sustainability intent. It allows the design-build team to understand at the earliest opportunity how the Army wants to incorporate sustainability into the project. By reviewing the preferred credits that the Army has laid out, the design-build team can focus its energy on delivering a solution that meets the needs of the client without wasting time and resources pursuing credits in which the owner is not interested and is unwilling to spend money on.
There is some concern that the prescriptive nature of the LEED checklist reduces flexibility and design initiative in the design effort on a given project. However, while the Army does not list innovation credits as preferred, all of the innovation credits are available on all Army projects. The current system does a solid job of communicating owner intent to design-builders, while still allowing for creativity and innovation in the reaching of the Silver standard.
One of the obvious drawbacks to the current system is the lack of independent verification of the projects meeting the SILVER standard. But it would be hard to propose that the Army absorb the cost of each individual certification. Given the current size and complexity of the Armyfs five-year construction program, certification costs would run into the tens of millions of dollars and would not necessarily return better value to the taxpayer.
Future Benefits
Overall, the Army's adoption of the LEED rating system will be beneficial to both the Army and the design and construction industry. While the Army's system of "required," "preferred," and "avoid" points may reduce innovation, the increased efficiency of a single system that most design-builders are already familiar with will have the desirable effect of significantly increasing the amount of sustainable design and construction.
George Woods is a vice president of Lifecycle Construction Services Inc.