Greenbuild 2009, Phoenix AZ

All About Systems – Part I:

By: Sonja Persram, BSc., MBA, LEED® AP
Source: Sustainable Alternatives Consulting Inc.

There was much to interest all sectors at GreenBuild. Major conference takeaways that consolidated into themes for me were systemic approaches to accelerate change, and living systems as a way to better understand places and our roles within the natural world. My GreenBuild write-up continues after the WorldGBC article, with a discussion of processes and policies which accelerate building greening.

Transwestern’s Senior Vice-President and Director of LEED & Sustainability Allan Skowdoski received a USGBC Leadership Award for the company’s green EB work. Rick Walker, the company’s Vice-President of Sustainability Services (formerly with Siemens Building Technologies) shared some stats on Transwestern’s accomplishments: in the past 12 months, 21 buildings were LEED certified (at all levels of EB, EBOM and V2) achieving 8,133 avoided MtCO2e, and 36 buildings are undergoing greening representing 7.6 million sf. Their goal is to green another 50 of their own buildings in the coming year, and also they will be leveraging their knowledge to buildings owned or managed by other companies and by governments to help simplify their learning curve.

Walker observed that greening multiple buildings – whether in or out of a portfolio - is all about systematic process. Here’s a peek at theirs: "at the end of the first set of submissions, before the buildings were certified, we scrutinized all submittals in team, credit by credit. We noted sticking points, easier processes, and put best practices in place. We derived a set of tasks associated with doing the projects, understood how long to get through a credit, and skill sets to achieve each. For the next project we switched so people worked on different credits, which yielded richer feedback and experience. We identified the number of tasks from project onset through completion; noted which credits had not been sought; and of course how the buildings differed from others.

"In contrast to other training styles for key facility staff, which often include conducting a 1- to 2-day Charette to learn about LEED, we taught the facility engineers and property managers using the tasks from this broad building-greening set. We shortened performance periods: submitting maintenance logs is much easier for a 3-month period than a 1 year performance period. Also, in documenting sustainable cost impacts for an innovation credit we noted more data was needed than simply cost; if we used only the USGBC cost calculator, we would have come to the (inaccurate) conclusion that LEED costs more. An example: we implemented green cleaning in a building – and found out that the facility’s cleaning program wouldn’t even meet minimum standards. Consequently it cost a little more to get to a LEED standard and this skewed the comparative costing." A methodical approach.

Appraisers who are members of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) must now include sustainability in their valuation process when appraising commercial buildings(sustainability aspects include climate change, resource depletion, and 'the effect of social, health and other attributes on buildings, their occupancy and demand.') Chris Corps of Asset Strategics in Victoria BC was North American representative on the RICS Committee that wrote the foundation document for this policy, entitled: Value Information Paper No 13: Sustainability and commercial property valuation, which now is part of the RICS red book. The impact of this paper is anticipated to have a trickle-down effect into International Valuation Standards and other related professions. This has huge potential for market transformation.[1]

Greening the I-Codes: The International Code Council (the national organization of U.S. building code officials) has begun a process to develop the International Green Construction Code (IGCC) applicable to both new construction and existing commercial buildings. Focus areas will be energy, water, materials and resource efficiency, enhanced IEQ, building owner and facility manager education and a lowering of CO2 emissions. The IGCC is being developed to be ready as a part of the 2012 set of International Codes. The first draft of the code is scheduled to be released for public comment in March 2010. More information about the meeting schedules, committee members and participants and the overall process, visit the ICC website at:
http://www.iccsafe.org/cs/SBTC/Pages/default.aspx and

Next GreenBuild conference installment: Systems to Enhance Social Equity, Living Systems, and Conference Kudos.

[1] This was included in my presentation on the RD10 panel: Challenging the “Unsystem”: Solutions for Addressing Building Code, Regulatory and Systemic Barriers, which arose from the Code Barriers report which lead author David Eisenberg of DCAT and I co-authored for Cascadia Region Green Building Council. Panel participants also were: David Eisenberg, Jason McLennan (Cascadia CEO) with moderator James Van Hemert (ED, Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute; their Sustainable Community Development Code is a significant achievement).