Ever wonder what it’s like to be in the owner’s shoes when it comes time to decide whether to build green? Many contractors are taking on that challenge by investing in their own sustainable headquarters. On the whole, the efficient offices are a big hit with employees and prospective project partners.
Out with the Old, in with the New
After remodeling and expanding its existing facility for more than five decades,
Conewago Enterprises, Inc., Hanover, Pa., decided it was time to start fresh. The second-generation family-owned business has about 340 employees and focuses on design-build commercial and industrial work across Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.
“We had done a couple green projects for other clients and decided if we were going to advise people on a design-build basis on LEED, then we needed to go through the process ourselves,” says Conewago President Donald B. Smith, Jr. “The big driver was to go through the process with our money. We were determined to build LEED without blowing the budget.”
Conewago broke ground in 2009 and met its goal of LEED Gold certification in May 2010. The 33,000-square-foot project took about a year to build, as crews had to work in phases around (and then dem
olish) the adjacent existing building. The first floor allows for open interaction among field and office managers, as well as features a break room and three conference rooms. The second floor houses the human resources, accounting, finance, engineering and estimating departments, while the third floor features a multimedia training room and space for Hoffheins Bros. General Contractors, which Conewago acquired in 2010.
“It’s so much more comfortable to work in than where we came from,” Smith says. “We’ve been able to arrange our departments where they need to be instead of where we had space for them.”
With its ready-mix concrete operations, steel fabrication facility and precast concrete plant, Conewago self-performed 60 percent of the project. The precast concrete wall panels are thermally efficient and 40 percent of the cement in the concrete was made from slag waste. Seventy percent of the steel products was made from scrap steel, and 99 percent of construction waste was recycled. Radiant heat combines with a high-efficiency air-conditioning system, and the three-story structure is topped off with reflective and vegetative roofs.
“We weren’t going to buy LEED points by doing things that wouldn’t actually save us energy and maintenance costs,” Smith says. “We were determined to build LEED Gold, but we wanted to make sure that where we spent money would provide more than just a LEED point.”
Overall, the new office’s plumbing systems reduce water and wastewater usage more than 40 percent; the HVAC systems reduce power usage more than 30 percent; and the lighting systems reduce electrical consumption more than 10 percent.
“We went from a 15,000-square-foot building to a 33,000-square-foot building and energy costs for our complex as a whole went down,” Smith says. “It’s not enough to pay for the building, but we managed to keep our annual costs slightly under what they were with twice the office space.”
Though Smith says donning the owner’s hat was challenging, it generated positive results in terms of client outreach.
“We’ve seen a big uptick in clients that want to do green but not necessarily LEED, so they can borrow ideas from here to use in their own facilities,” Smith says. “Being a design-builder, you’re constantly in contact with the client in making those decisions, so being able to show them individual aspects of high-efficiency lighting and HVAC systems is great.”
From Four Buildings to OneWhite-Spunner Construction, Inc., Mobile, Ala., has made good use of its green headquarters since moving in two years ago. The 72-employee design-build firm has held three open houses to show local architects and clients the open floor plan, timer-controlled lighting and HVAC systems, drought-tolerant landscaping and other sustainable elements. The outreach has turned into sales, with the firm completing six green buildings since 2009, including Louisiana’s first LEED Silver apartment complex and a processing plant in Bayou La Batre, Ala., that recycles nearly 6,000 tons of shrimp and crab waste annually.
“For most of the jobs we price today, we always run the numbers to see what the additional cost would be to go LEED because clients are always curious,” says Tommy Rowe, executive vice president of White-Spunner Construction.
Though it was difficult for the firm to absorb the 15 percent additional cost to achieve LEED Silver certification, Rowe felt strongly that the industry was going green and that White-Spunner should be a leader in the movement. Indeed, its new headquarters was the state’s first LEED-certified project south of Montgomery, Ala.
In the old setup, employees were spread across four different buildings, resulting in chaotic communication. The new 40,000-square-foot office features 4-foot-high partitions so employees working in cubicles are exposed to daylight. Forty skylights on the second floor often let in enough natural light that the interior lights turn off. The heating and cooling system is on a timer, resulting in 28 percent energy savings since occupancy. Low-flow toilets and faucets contribute to a 40 percent reduction in water usage, and 40 percent of the building’s air comes from outside.
White-Spunner provided a project manager for the six-month job and subcontracted the majority of the work. “It was a learning curve for everybody involved,” Rowe says. “LEED wa
s still pretty new to the market in 2008, so it required a lot of investigating and research to get points in different areas.”
The project team diverted more than 50 percent of the 128 tons of construction waste from landfills; locally sourced the structural steel, concrete, rebar and metal studs; used certified wood, recycled carpet and low-VOC coatings; instituted preferred parking for fuel-efficient vehicles; and started an in-house recycling program in an effort to garner the 35 points needed to achieve LEED Silver certification.
Additionally, the two-story structure features 8-inch concrete walls. “We’re on call for a lot of Fortune 500 companies, so we had to build a hurricane-proof building with solid concrete walls and 1½-inch tinted glass windows,” Rowe says. “We also have a full generator backup so we can stay open after a storm and take care of our clients.”
Adapt, Reuse, Rebuild
Sometimes building green is part choice, part mandate. Such was the case for
M.C. Dean, Dulles, Va., which set out to open a world-class regional office in Baltimore in 2009. A Baltimore ordinance requires new construction permits to be registered under LEED or the city’s green building program. M.C. Dean opted for LEED because of its rigorous standards and began work renovating a 105,000-square-foot abandoned warehouse in the historic Sharp-Leadenhall district.
“M.C. Dean has had extensive involvement in Baltimore for more than 40 years, so having a permanent presence there made sense,” says CEO Bill Dean. “The main purpose of the new business hub is to better serve our clients, expand the market and provide an area where we can attract employees.”
M.C. Dean settled on the warehouse property, which encompassed five buildings that morphed together over time, because of its proximity to commuter rail, bus lines, interstates, affordable housing and Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. The firm hired
Lorax Partnerships, LLC, Columbia, Md., as the LEED consultant and brought in
Kinsley Construction, Timonium, Md., as the general contractor. M.C. Dean designed the project’s telecommunication and security systems.
The three-story building occupies an entire city block, with parts of the structure dating back to at least 1880. Crews encountered 60-year-old steel and concrete construction, as well as a mix of masonry and heavy timber. M.C. Dean decided to preserve the masonry exterior and floor systems, but gutted the interior and installed all new windows, utilities, elevators, energy-efficient mechanical and electrical systems, and a reflective roof. The roof also features a 63-kilowatt solar array predominantly comprised of thin-film photovoltaics, along with some crystalline photovoltaics.
“It came down to the weight of the systems,” says M.C. Dean Project Manager Larry Lehman. “The thin-film weighs about 1 pound per square foot and the crystalline weighs about 7 pounds per square foot. Because this was an adaptive reuse project, we had to look at the margin for adding weight. We were limited structurally in many areas.”
The combination system turned out to be beneficial, as the thin-film produces throughout the day with less intense light, while the crystalline experiences more peaks with brighter light.
“The solar system will produce about 12 percent of the building’s energy use,” Lehman says. “The payback period is in the five- to nine-year range, which is pretty near term when you think about it.”
A kiosk in the lobby helps M.C. Dean track solar performance and schedule photovoltaic panel maintenance, as well as allows anyone in the building to see how much energy has been produced.
“It’s hard to believe the transformation that has taken place,” Dean says of the new office. “I’m optimistic it will be the flagship of that area and spur development of nearby properties.”
The U.S. Green Building Council (
USGBC) is still reviewing the project’s scorecard to decide between a LEED Silver and a LEED Gold rating. In the meantime, M.C. Dean is training employees to design and install solar technology on future jobs, as well as working to implement recruiting programs for apprentices in Baltimore.
An IPD Pilot Project
When
Balfour Beatty Construction’s North Region decided to relocate its headquarters to Fairfax, Va., the overall project goal was to eliminate waste in the design and construction process through integrated project delivery (IPD). Sustainability fit nicely into that objective, but ultimately collaboration was the key to success.
“The industry is evolving quickly, with more cases of integrated deliveries across different markets,” says Mark Konchar, Balfour Beatty’s corporate vice president of integration. “We wanted to develop one from the start and play the role of the customer to understand what that entails.”
Balfour Beatty’s 10-year lease was coming to an end in 2010, providing the firm with a great opportunity to reinvent its working environment.
“We wanted to have a space that supports what we envisioned for the future. We knew our corporate approach to all things on the sustainability front was critical to our business, customers and staff,” Konchar says.
There was one small problem: Balfour Beatty had its eye on a LEED Gold rating, but the office space it found on the fifth floor of an existing eight-story building didn’t have any green infrastructure in place. Through extensive lease negotiations, Balfour Beatty secured five LEED Energy & Atmosphere points covering sub-metered equipment and tenant payment of energy costs. Lease negotiations also included modification of the base building plumbing fixtures, resulting in LEED points for water efficiency.
Moving forward on the 26,000-square-foot tenant fit-out, Balfour Beatty worked with a core group of innovative, digitally savvy project partners, including Fox Architects, McLean, Va., and Engineered Systems Alliance, LLC, Alexandria, Va. The three firms shared risks and rewards via a tri-party contract, and staff co-located to increase collaboration on tasks such as setting metrics for schedule, sustainability, safety and processes.
The team also piloted new technologies, including building information modeling, so group members could share data in real time and manage issues pertaining to LEED credits and energy performance. One program was used to analyze the impact of the sun on heating and cooling loads, as well as to determine the amount of window shading needed along the fifth floor.
“We found October—not the summer months—had the highest sunlight demand on the southwest side of the building, so the partition heights and shading we use on one side of the building differ from the other side of the building,” Konchar says.
This type of flexibility was crucial to the project in many ways, including delivering a space that supports a variety of work styles and can adapt to future technologies. On the waste-management side, Balfour Beatty selected polished concrete flooring, FSC-certified wood products, carpet tiles, Green Guard-certified fabrics, Energy Star-rated products and occupancy sensors.
Importantly, Balfour Beatty made decisions that transcended the LEED rating system to align with its own definition of sustainability. For example, the team designated space for a “learning wall” along a major corridor to educate employees and visitors on what sustainability means to the company as a whole.
Balfour Beatty moved into the new office in November 2010 and received its LEED Gold certification this fall.
In 2007, the National Center for Construction Education and Research (
NCCER) faced an important decision on how to accommodate its growing staff in an outdated headquarters building that the not-for-profit education foundation had been renting since 1996. After several years of evaluating relocation and building costs in various cities, NCCER found it prudent to keep its roots in the Gainesville, Fla., area.
With land and construction prices falling, 2009 was the prime time to purchase property at Progress Corporate Park in Alachua, Fla., near the University of Florida. In searching for the right design-build firm to construct its new headquarters, NCCER decided it was important to have a building that would be representative of the construction industry and reflect current building practices through sustainability. The organization also wanted to hire a firm that believed in—and implemented—workforce development.
“We felt it was important to use the office as an example of the current best building practices used in the construction industry,” says NCCER President Don Whyte. “It was important to include green and sustainable construction, workforce development practices and safety. We wanted the contractor to come in with a design that represents the NCCER.”
The Haskell Company, Jacksonville, Fla., presented the winning proposal and began fine-tuning the details with NCCER staff in mid-2010, followed by the groundbreaking in November 2010. Haskell finished on time and on budget in August 2011 with zero accidents or injuries due to the implementation of tilt-up construction and a screening process to ensure subcontractors’ training and safety competence. Primary subcontractors included
CCS Mechanical, Inc., Ocala, Fla.;
Tri-City Electrical Contractors, Inc., Altamonte Springs, Fla.; and Jacksonville, Fla.-based Childers Roofing & Sheet Metal, Inc., and THC Steel Fabrication.
Furthermore, NCCER hired Chip Reid, president of
Current Builders, Pompano Beach, Fla., to serve as the owner’s representative. “Under Chip’s guidance, Current Builders provided outstanding oversight. They helped us achieve a great project and avoid many oversights,” Whyte says.
The 31,000-square-foot building has an industrial feel, with an open floor plan, exposed ceilings and an educational “craft tour” that highlights the crafts that worked on the project. The space accommodates the NCCER’s staff of more than 40 people, plus 10 employees of
Prov, NCCER’s testing partner. Five conference rooms with high-tech multimedia illustrate how training rooms should be arranged. Additionally,
North American Crane Bureau,
Caterpillar and
Lincoln Electric are providing crane, heavy equipment and welding simulators that demonstrate state-of-the-art training technology.
“We wanted to make sure it’s a showplace for training best practices when visitors come to learn how to set up their workforce development programs,” Whyte says.
The two-story building’s green features shine through as well—starting with the clerestory, which allows natural light to filter inside. Motion sensors for non-emergency lighting reduce power consumption, and high-efficiency plumbing and native foliage with a self-sustaining irrigation system reduce water usage. A cooling tower aids energy efficiency and a monitoring system ensures the building performance maintains the required thermal comfort level. Additionally, the NCCER has a measurement and verification plan in place to monitor energy savings throughout the year.
“The response to the building has been overwhelmingly positive,” Whyte says. “The staff loves the environment and visitors are impressed with the statement we’re making for the industry.”
—Joanna Masterson