Announcing The Build2Sustain Podcast

We're thrilled to announced the Build2Sustain Podcast (iTunes link). Part of our mission is to explore best practices in green building. To advance that mission we've launched a podcast to discuss the issues important to the green building industry. This month's discussion centers around managing client expectations when it comes to green building. Should an architect act as an advocate for LEED with this client? What happens when a building doesn't perform to the green expectations of it's owner or tenant? What on Earth is a green lease? We delve into these issues with Stephen Del Percio and Shari Shapiro two leading attorneys in the green building industry.

Build2Sustain is a conversation...so join us...the comment section awaits!

Is the Construction Industry Ready for "Open?"

One of the goals of Build2Sustain open up the design/build process so the public can see (to overuse the phrase) how the sausage gets made. We want to do this, not just to better explore sustainability and green design, though these concepts lack a concrete definition in the market, or even within the design community. But even more fundamentally, we need to become better designers and better builders of buildings. The question I ask myself..."Is the Construction Industry Ready for 'Open?'"

An estimated 10%-15% of Construction Cost is attributed to rework. That is work that has to be redone because of miscommunication from the client or the design team or because of an error by a contractor. That cost is baked into to all well written construction contracts, it's an unexplained tax on building something. It's not malicious or decietful, simply put people make mistakes, and those (usually) minor mistakes can add up to serious cost.

We believe well-curated crowd sourcing mixed and open sharing of results throughout the design/build process is essential to compiling a set of best practices that can be employed widely throughout the industry. But are design and build pros ready to open up the process frankly. One Lighting Designer I worked with told me once "why would I blog? I get paid for what I know, if I tell you what I know for free, why would you pay me any more?"

That kind of thinking is very closed, it's pre-web and it's not conducive to our experiment. It's also rampant in an industry dominated by boomers. I think there are enough professionals of a different age and ethos that we can make it work, and almost more importantly, I think clients are going to begin to demand it. In an age where every dollar is closely guarded, clients are going to work with teams who make their process open. Clients increasingly will want to know everything about their building. They either built it themselves or are taking it over and I believe we can engage the owners of commericial buildings to be just as learned about the space, what went into it and the design process behind as we can for a homeowner, obsessing over every finish and stud.

Managing Clients' Green Expectations

LEED certification from the USGBC has done more to promote sustainable building practices in the US than any other force of the last decade. For some, the LEED program is indeed the equivalent of green building and design. So if LEED is the future and is a value add for clients shouldn’t architects and engineers advocate for certification? Recently, Stephen Del Percio outlined this argument in his blog post he pits two schools of thought against one another. The first is advocated by green building rock star Jerry Yudelson, who this past September gave two keynotes at a event sponsored by Central Texas Green Building Council. As quoted in the press release Yudelson presented the following:

clear evidence that high-level green outcomes add significant value to buildings.

“...What part of a 30 percent increase in value from LEED certification is hard to communicate?...You are doing your clients a disservice by letting them build projects without LEED certification,’ he said. ‘It almost amounts to dereliction of your duty as professionals....”

These quotes demonstrate Mr. Yudelson’s clear belief that it is the responsibility of architects and designers to advocate for LEED certification, under the guise that it is a clear value-add when designing a new building.

For his part, in the same blog post Del Percio, discusses why attorneys caution against such advocacy:

First, the design professional who functions as an advocate, extolling the promises of increased energy efficiency, asset values, and rental premiums of LEED-certified buildings is creating a corresponding high expectation in the eyes of his or her client.

...insurance coverage implications of the Energy Ace LEED certification “guarantee.” Unbridled green building advocacy could also provide an insurance carrier with the argument that the design professional has provided the functional equivalent of a guarantee- either LEED certification, performance, or otherwise- that might give the carrier grounds to deny coverage for negligence claims arising out of the project...

Build2Sustain’s blog always seeks to explore the issues important design/build pros. We feel it’s important to drill into these issues in more depth. So we’ve asked Stephen Del Percio and Shari Shapiro to be part of our first ever podcast. The podcast will discuss green certification and managing client expectation. We’re thrilled to be recording the podcast later this week for release next month.

In the meantime, we throw the comment section open to you. Architects-do you advocate for LEED certification in your design practice? Attorneys, what are the risks involved to advocating green building practices broadly and certification specifically? The best comments and questions will be used in our discussion with Stephen and Shari later this week.

Bust that bubble!

It's easy when you are part of a given industry to get inside your own head too much. My past life was in theatrical design and over and over again I would work on projects in which the given creative team was so wrapped up in it's own vision it forgot that an audience had to enjoy the thing they were putting out in the world. The design, direction, and performance of the play was so solidly insular that an outside audience couldn't engage with it or understand it. For example, I once worked on a play in which a character laid on the floor looking into a mirror suspended above him reciting the alphabet forwards and backwards for 5 minutes-then the lights went out. There were 100 lighting changes. The team involved thought it was a brilliant piece of theater. The audience didn't know what it was watching.

I'm not accusing the design/build community of being quite that insular, but as we work to suffienctly define green building and sustainable building practices, we sometimes forget that there are clients out there that might have their own ideas of what green building is, for better or worse. Some might think it means solar panels on the roof, another might think its all natural carpeting. "Green" is an amorphous term in our culture now and so it's important to come to terms with our clients in ways they can understand. They don't live in this bubble every day. We do.

How do you burst the bubble and break through to clients?

USGBC-AR Talk on Sustainable Lighting

Next week, I'll be headed to the Arkansas to discuss sustainable commercial lighting at the USGBC conference. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity and I'm working tirelessly on my presentation. I love prepping a talk like this because it makes me stir around the soup in my brain and distill down an active fact-based story to tell my audience. It's a great way to force myself into culling a narrative out of subjects I think about every day. I don't like posting incomplete thoughts on this blog but I wanted to give you a couple of take-away points that I think apply to sustainability broadly.

We often forget who our clients are. Especially when we are designing for LEED or ASHRAE, too often designers are designing for points and not for clients. This will ultimately not end well. 

We think about sustainability in limited terms. LEED checklists are the beginning of wisdom when it comes to sustainability, not the end. It's imperative that we work toward more holistically sustainable solutions if our building design is to be sucessful in the future.

We need to think about buildings as composed of two types of elements-Active and Passive. Then we must plan differently for each element. Lumber, paint and drywall are all important building elements but they are passive building elements. That is to say you, in general you don't walk into a commericial building and "turn the lumber on" you don't react to it and other than the structure is supports, you don't live with it everyday. Lighting and climate control are different, we have forgotten that these aren't simply building systems but fundamental aspects to how we live in the natural world. We have to remember that in the future.