Winning is a Habit

This month, Jamie Qualk shares some of his thoughts on the LEED rating system. Jamie Qualk is a vice president at SSRCx, LLC and team leader of the Sustainable Solutions Group. He lectures in the Civil Engineering department of Vanderbilt University regarding sustainability and construction and also at Lipscomb University in the Institute for Sustainable Practice regarding renewable energy.  He also blogs on ED+C's Enviro-Blog and under Green Voices at TennesseeGreen.com

The U. S. Green Building Council and its LEED® green building rating system’s influence continues to grow and excel despite a less than ideal construction and building operations market.  This ongoing success also accelerates despite a growing list of critics from within and outside the industry.  While LEED is certainly not perfect, this market based tool of best practices is the finest we have to begin reducing and eventually overcoming the impacts our buildings have on the environment and the individuals that live and work in them.  

As a leader in a firm that is currently working on over 100 LEED projects, my team and I regularly encounter areas where LEED could be improved.   While we have our occasional frustrations, every day we see the benefits that a third party verification tool like LEED can deliver.  Our portfolio of projects includes existing buildings where we’ve measured water and energy reductions of 20% and 30% respectively.   Some of our new construction projects are diverting nearly all construction and demolition debris from landfills.   We’ve helped clients eliminate the majority of chemicals used by cleaning teams by implementing effective green cleaning programs.  While these and other wins are exciting for us and our clients, we recognize that these projects are still only onetime or one-project events.

As we apply our knowledge to more projects these wins tend to come easier or with even better results.  Our team as well as our clients learn a great deal from each project as we work to overcome the unique situations that can arise through the design and construction of so many buildings. As a result, our capability to reduce building impacts only improves with time.  Maybe this is one of the best things about LEED, the fact that our team and our clients are growing through the application of better habits to all projects, including those that are not pursuing LEED certification.

Vince Lombardy said, “You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing….” I couldn’t agree more and what I think we are seeing in the design, construction and operations marketplace is the continued application of better habits.  When we get in to the habit of applying the best practices available to us, relating to our particular role in buildings, everyone wins.

Week in Review

Welcome to any new Twitter/Facebook followers!  Here's a quick look at what our readers have been looking at most this week:

Some of last week's posts seem to have been gathering serious momentum. 

1) James's post last Friday, Life's Work, is getting quite a few readers.  We hope this means you are all thinking about what your life's work will be, and we hope you will share any opinions or insights with us in the comment section.

2) Advisory Board member, Yahya Henry's guest post last week, Consistency is right behind in second.  If you like what he's been up to, make sure to check out Aribra.com for more.

Mediocre is still going strong and holding its spot.  Looks like we're not the only ones that think that our building stock can rise above the "mediocre" level it's at now.

Finally, some good news for our Podcast subscribers.  We have just finished wrapping up the recording session for our April episode and are in the process of editing.  You can look forward to a new episode by next Thursday.

Enjoy your weekend!

Mediocre

If you got a performance review at work, you’d hate for your manager to write “mediocre” anywhere on the report. It’s almost worse than writing “poor.” Mediocre movies never get a cult following…they’re just mediocre. Well we have a mediocre building stock in the US. It’s not a poor building stock…Port-au-Prince had a poor building stock. But if no one wants to be mediocre…how come mediocrity reigns when you look at the built environment of the US?

We didn’t get to the building stock we have in America today because the very best architects, the very best contractors and the very best materials were used on every single project every single time. We got here because pretty good architects and pretty good contractors working with pretty good budgets were asked to create projects close to budget and close to on time.

The design/build industry’s response to this problem has been to call on the best architects, engineers and contractors to build brand new buildings that are in many ways better than their predecessors. That’s great-it proves our current mediocrity. The problem is that those new buildings…those better buildings represent 1% of our building stock. They don’t solve the problem-they provide an example. It’s time for scalable best practices to take hold in the industry. It’s time to raise the bar on what we consider “mediocre.”