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GREEN BUILDING
Going green or gone
By Mary Buckner Powers
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Experts say it costs
about the same to build a green building as it does a
traditional one, but owners save on a green building immediately.
Credit: photo courtesy of clark construction group |
Contractors must get on board with sustainability or be left
behind in an industry that is growing green and greener more
and more contractors are climbing aboard the "green building"
train. Not only is it easy, but it is essential now that the
green movement is gaining momentum among project owners.
There are a couple of rating systems in the U.S. designed
to assess the impact of buildings on the environment, but
the dominant one at the moment is from the U.S. Green Building
Council, Washington, D.C., which published its first set of
ratings in 2000. To date, it has certified just 570 buildings,
but 5,000 more now under construction are expected to meet
the certification criteria. "With that kind of growth
curve, it's not something that's going away," says USGBC
spokeswoman Judith Webb. "It's not a fad."
The council promotes environmentally responsible design and
construction practices across the U.S. and established the
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating
system to evaluate buildings based on sustainability. They
are graded certified silver, gold or platinum based on the
number of elements that have been incorporated.
"It's not just the design. They have to be built as designed
and perform as they should to get the rating," Webb says.
Some of the criteria that lead to achieving a LEED rating
are recycling construction waste and implementing sustainable
site development, including sediment control. Water efficiency,
energy efficiency and protected indoor environmental quality
are key LEED elements. Using materials with low amounts of
volatile organic compounds and materials made from recycled
products earns LEED points. Points are also accrued by using
materials manufactured within a 500-mile radius of the construction
site.
Innovation also counts, and some "low-hanging fruit"
can give contractors an edge, says Beth Studley, vice president
of project development for Holder Construction, Atlanta. Even
though materials are usually the responsibility of the architects,
"smart contractors get to know what products and materials
are out there and where they are produced," she says.
Most of Bethesda, Md.-based Clark Construction's commercial
construction meets the criteria to be LEED certified or LEED
silver by just doing what the company does naturally, says
Marc Kersey, vice president in Clark's Costa Mesa, Calif.,
office. "The evolution of environmentally sensitive materials
and equipment and new state criteria that must be followed
means you don't have to do much more to be certified now,"
he says. "There are contractors out there who are putting
sustainable buildings together that don't [even] know it."
Keeping Records
The key is documenting every step along the way. "That's
what causes the most heartburn," Webb says. "It
takes infinite documentation."
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Homewood Middle School in Birmingham,
Ala., (top and bottom) was the first LEED-certified
building in Alabama. The contractor, Brasfield &
Gorrie, says it cost no more to build than a traditional
school project with conventional materials and techniques.
Credit: photo © doug fogelson
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Clark Construction often has three to five binders full of
documentation for a project, Kersey says. Smaller contractors
get by with having an assistant project manager collect the
required data to submit for certification.
Clark uses a combination of its own trained staff and outside
consultants to keep track of projects and score them for LEED
certification. "A lot of our jobs in California have
as part of the contract that we must reach a certain LEED
rating," says Kersey. "We hire consultants to get
to that rating."
Owners are the driving force behind the sustainability trend.
It now costs about the same to build a green building as it
does a traditional one, but owners begin to reap the savings
immediately, says Webb.
Owners can save as much as 35% on utilities during the first
year of operation. And as the price of power rises, the life-cycle
cost savings become more important. Wal-Mart, for example,
has taken steps to reduce its energy costs by 30% by incorporating
energy-efficient features into its stores. The giant retailer
expects to spend about $1.28 billion this year on electricity
and plans to control those costs through smart design, says
Angela Beehler, Wal-Mart's director of energy regulation.
The company already is saving more than 250 million kW hours
a year by building skylights into its new stores so lights
can be automatically dimmed on sunny days. In California,
it uses white membrane roofs, which reduce cooling needs by
8%, in addition to using the most efficient lighting system
available. Wal-Mart has two experimental stores in McKinney,
Texas, and Aurora, Colo., where it tests new materials and
technologies to incorporate into future stores.
The single biggest change required for sustainable construction
is collaboration, say both designers and contractors. "You
have to go in as a team player," says Bill Kreis, vice
president of JohnsonKreis Construction, Birmingham, Ala.,
which is building a 15,000-sq-ft LEED Montessori school near
Birmingham.
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Walgreen's solar roofing adds to
energy efficiency.
Credit: photo © 2005 Steve Uzzell, courtesy of
walgreens
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And contractors no longer can be left out of the design phase.
"They have to understand why something is being done
and why it is important," says Beth Manguso, a green-building
consultant in Fair Hope, Ala.
If general contractors are on board early in a project, they
can make sure the specifications and drawings are clear, Manguso
says. They also have a better idea of their responsibilities,
she adds.
Manguso and Chris Miller, senior estimator at Brasfield &
Gorrie, Birmingham, started the Green Building Council chapter
in Alabama. "It's just a new approach and really not
that different," says Miller, who was the project manager
on the first LEED-certified building in Alabama, Homewood
Middle School.
Miller says his colleagues initially resisted building green.
"But it was only because they weren't educated about
what's involved," he says.
Contractors who are unfamiliar with the concepts often expect
building green to cost them money. Miller advises contractors
to study the issues to learn what is involved. "That
way they won't have to throw money at a project just because
it has the word green in it," he says.
Brasfield & Gorrie expected to pay more to build the
Homewood Middle School, but "it just wasn't so,"
Miller says. The additional documentation is more an issue
of education than it is of cost, he says.
Contractors will see the need to adapt to green-building
requirements as more green buildings are constructed, says
Miller, president of the Alabama chapter of the USGBC. "They
will have to get their arms around this issue or they will
be left behind," he says.
Fear Factor
Holder's Studley says contractors still have a "fear
factor," which can often add cost to a project when there
is no need for it. "The most important first step to
take is to have a good construction plan," she says.
Indoor air quality is an area where contractors make a huge
impact, says Studley. It's a matter of sealing off ductwork
so it won't collect dust. "It takes a management plan
with a superintendent who knows how to protect materials,"
she says. Keeping the indoor air quality pristine on a green
project also depends on using paints, adhesives, sealants
and carpet with low levels of volatile organic compounds,
say contractors.
In renovations, projects have to be surveyed to determine
whether deconstruction to save existing materials is better
than demolition, Studley says. Recycling construction waste
is so easy that some contractors consider it criminal not
to do it on all jobs. Beyond that, it saves money, says Josh
Bomstein, business development manager for Creative Contractors,
Clearwater, Fla.
Saving Money
Creative Contractors has saved $20,000 on a green community
center project in Dunedin, Fla., by recycling materials. In
some areas, it takes time to find a company that recycles
materials for profit. In the Union Pacific headquarters in
Omaha, Neb., Holder Construction helped establish a recycling
program.
In general, contractors are expected to disturb only a small
area of construction sites and have site-utilization plans
to protect trees that are to be saved. Clean, smoke-free construction
sites also are a requirement. Holder's clients pushed the
company into going green, Studley says. Atlanta's Emory University
and the firm's other clients have sustainability missions.
Most architects now are designing with sustainability in
mind, using common-sense approaches like orienting buildings
to the south to minimize hot western exposures, using natural
daylighting and incorporating passive solar cooling. These
processes can downsize a building's HVAC and lighting systems
and cut energy usage.
"It all boils down to good, smart design and construction,"
says Fred Andreas, an adjunct assistant professor at the University
of Colorado's College of Architecture and Planning and a principal
architect with UNiT Design Studio PC in Denver. "I really
believe that if you minimize the energy-cost payback, the
initial cost [of LEED certification] can become lower than
that of standard construction."
Even developers have joined the movement, because many tenants
expect more sustainable features in the buildings they choose
to occupy. For some owners, fears about the cost of sustainable
construction remains the most important element, but "people
are moving away from the cost issue," says Tom Hootman,
the communications director for USGBC Colorado. Many green
buildings are being built for the same budgets as conventional
buildings, he says. "That's why today, everyone needs
to understand how to build green."
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Hilltop Montessori: A LEED Case
Study
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photo courtesy of HKW Associates
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Forming the right team with the right mindset is key
to successfully building a green project, says Bill
Segrest, an architect with HKW Associates, Birmingham,
Ala.
The construction work is not much different on a Leadership
in Energy and Environmental Design project; it just
takes more coordination among the disciplines, says
Segrest, the project manager on the Hilltop Montessori
School in Mt. Laurel, near Birmingham. The 15,000-sq-ft,
$2.5 million school will be completed in late September.
The U.S. Green Building Council, which developed the
LEED rating system, has taken the guesswork out of building
green. "They have strict guidelines to follow,
which makes it easy," Segrest says. "That
dominates every single decision made on the project."
Projects need a certain number of points to achieve
a LEED rating. The owner and the design and construction
team decided which points could reasonably be obtained
at Hilltop to achieve a LEED rating. But they also had
a list of points they might be able to achieve.
"We let the points we thought we could get start
the design, and along the way, we tried to pick up others,"
Segrest says.
Beth Manguso, the LEED consultant on the project, says
it's important not to "buy" points but to
add elements if they produce a return on investment.
At Hilltop, the decision was made to invest more in
insulation to reduce the energy load rather than invest
in high-cost HVAC equipment. A key LEED element was
the building's northern orientation to keep out the
Alabama summer heat.
Sometimes, conflicts for points can't be resolved.
The Hilltop team wanted to use LEED-certified wood products,
but they weren't available within a 500-mile radius
of the project.
"We would have lost the material location point,
so we didn't get the certified wood," Segrest says.
Hilltop wanted points for a sustainable site, so few
impervious materials were used. "There are sidewalks
and a roof, but the rest is crushed pea gravel,"
Segrest says. The project has a bioswell, which slowly
introduces runoff back into the water table rather than
the storm sewer.
Construction was done without disturbing the trees outside
the footprint of the building. Small trees under the
footprint were relocated, and large ones were chipped
and used as mulch.
The paints and adhesives in the interior contain few,
if any, volatile organic compounds. Under the LEED requirements,
the inside of the building must be flushed of any off-gases
for two weeks before it's occupied. Smoking is not allowed
on the site to protect the indoor air quality.
All the materials on the exterior were recycled products,
including LEED-certified concrete siding and naturally
quarried fieldstone from the site.
Construction waste was recycled, and bins were set
up for each recyclable product. The bin for regular
garbage had to be dumped just three times. "It
would need to be dumped more than 30 times on a normal
project," Segrest says.
Other elements include a clerestory of lights above
the main corridor to let daylight into the middle of
the building. The lights in the building are zoned so
that on bright days there may be no lights on at all,
but on cloudy days, the lights come on only in areas
where there is little natural light.
"We're starting to see more and more clients with
energy efficiency high on their priority list. It's
becoming the norm," says Segrest.
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