FEATURE ARTICLE, JULY 2008

SAVE GREEN BY GOING GREEN
Committing to optimizing existing commercial buildings to meet LEED standards can help an owner’s bottom line and the environment.
Matt Forman

The marketplace is changing — prospective tenants and owners are now requesting information regarding commercial buildings sustainability (buildings consume a high percentage of the nation’s energy and resources: 70 percent of its electricity and 40 percent of its raw materials¹). Environmental stewardship and responsibility have become significant influences in American culture. The green movement is all around: in advertising, in community programs and in the products consumers buy. Municipalities are mandating that their own properties or projects that they fund are green buildings. Unfortunately, those requirements have automatically excluded the vast majority of existing commercial property. Until now.

The ability to attain green certification under current LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design²) programs has heretofore been limited to new construction or major renovation projects. Owners and managers that did not have large capital budgets could not easily participate in certification programs. This limited the number of LEED certifiable buildings and created a perception that LEED certification was only attainable by big projects. It also cut many properties out of the running for potential tenants that were dedicated to relocating to sustainable work environments. However, the U.S. Green Building Council has instituted a new standard, LEED Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance (EB: OM). The new class of certification provides owners of existing commercial properties a framework through which they can maximize operational efficiency of existing buildings, minimize their impact on the environment and attain LEED certification.

LEED EB: OM is a comprehensive rating system that measures physical characteristics of buildings, including energy and water efficiency of operational systems, as well as operational functions such as recycling programs and purchasing sustainable, recycled materials. In short, it provides owners with the means to make an existing property more sustainable without requiring a major construction project.

Lawrence Group provides cost-effective initial surveys that compare a building to the rating system to quickly identify the feasibility of attaining LEED EB: OM certification. The rating system is broken into six sections: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovations in operations. The system takes into account elements ranging from what type of irrigation and landscaping a building has to the efficiency of the HVAC systems down to whether building management purchases recycled materials and local produce for thee building cafeteria. Above all, the program is geared towards making the most efficient use of what already exists within the building and its operations system. The goal is not to force owners to scrap the existing cooling system, but rather to evaluate the current equipment, tune it up and ensure that it runs efficiently. There are many sound, common sense practices that will save owners money and, oh, by the way, help the planet.

Certification levels range from Certified, for buildings that score a minimum of 34 points in the ratings, to Platinum, for those scoring at least 68 points and up to a maximum of 92 points. There are prerequisites that buildings must meet to qualify, but even if a property does not qualify for certification, simply engaging in the evaluation process may yield operational efficiencies that will help the owner’s bottom line and improve the building’s environmental footprint.

There are many steps that can be taken to create a green building. Owners that ask themselves the following questions have the potential to reap significant savings upon finding the answers. What kinds of plants are used for landscaping outside your building? Are there annuals that require daily watering, or regional, drought resistant plants? Do the building occupants ride public transportation to work? Does management encourage car-pooling? Do building management and tenants buy recycled paper products? Does the building have heating and cooling systems checked each year to make sure they are running as they were designed to run? Does the cleaning staff use green cleaning products? Do the contractors that work in the building recycle construction waste?

Setting the environmental impact aside for the moment — does it increase the value of a commercial building to have efficient systems that control energy costs? Yes, and savings can be achieved in myriad ways. Tenants can receive higher productivity from their staff in a building that has natural daylight and higher-quality air. Owners can cut landscaping and watering costs significantly by using different plants that are still beautiful. And existing properties can viably compete with others in this new, greener marketplace and find greater success attracting tenants. The LEED EB: OM certification process can help owners and mangers improve their bottom line, not just help save the planet.

Matt Forman, AIA, LEED® AP, is a senior associate with Lawrence Group, a St. Louis-based architecture firm.

¹ U.S. Green Building Council. LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance. 2008. www.usgbc.org

² LEED® is a registered trademark of the U.S. Green Building Council.


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