[SustainableNC] Green Offices from WSJ

Wed Jul 17 14:43:32 EDT 2002

This is a good article on the growing market impacts of Green Building.

TITLE: 	Once Skeptics, Builders See Green In Contracts for 'Green' Offices 
AUTHOR: 	QUEENA SOOK KIM 
DATE: 	10-Jul-02 
PUBLICATION: 	Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition 

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - When the state of California set out in 1999 to build
one of the largest "green" office complexes in the country, construction
manager Ron Mitchell was perplexed.
  I'm not joking, I thought the skin of the building was going to be green,"
Mr. Mitchell recalls.
  But other builders and manufacturers were more outraged than confused by
some of the project's bidding requirements. 
"When California issued its green specs, it was scary," says Scott Lesnet,
environmental manager for All Steel Inc., a furniture company and subsidiary
of Hon Industries Inc., Muscatine, Iowa. "They're nuts," he recalls
thinking. "There's no way any company can deliver all that."
  Makers of furniture, carpet and other materials were required to meet
strict limits on gases emitted by 21 chemicals, such as benzene, that are
considered unsafe. Construction companies were required to recycle at least
75% of the debris from the site's existing buildings that were to be torn
down. And in case bidders weren't familiar with the environmental acronyms
peppering the binder-sized request -- such as VOC (volatile organic
compound) or RC (recycled content) -- the state included a glossary.
  The Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturer's Association wrote
the state to say it found the bidding requests "to be impractical, if not
impossible, to achieve in the near future."
  But with a nearly $60 million contract on the line, manufacturers couldn't
afford to turn their backs on the huge potential profit. So All Steel and
two other furniture makers quietly went against the industry current and
submitted a bid. All Steel landed the contract. And the furniture-makers
association has since backed off its stance.
  Such projects are pushing green building into the mainstream, says Nigel
Howard, vice president of the United States Green Building Council. The
Washington, D.C., building industry group has created a certification for
buildings that meet certain standards for energy efficiency, indoor air
quality and use of novel technologies such as waterless urinals. 
The program has won the blessing of environmental groups, such as the
Natural Resources Defense Council, and even is catching on with the private
sector. This year, the council says, more than 400 building projects,
including those by Toyota Motor Corp., RadioShack Corp., and Goldman Sachs
Group Inc., will apply for certification, up from 45 in 2000, when the
program started.
  Companies say green construction has obvious benefits: Energy and water
bills are lower, for example. But no one is sure how much workers' health
and productivity benefit from such building standards. Still, trade groups
and California's Environmental Protection Agency say people fare better in
workplaces with lower levels of the harmful gases, such as formaldehyde,
often emitted from new carpeting, upholstery, paints, sealants and plastics
used in buildings and office furniture.
  The California complex, at the eastern end of the capitol mall, is serving
as a template for about $500 million in new state projects, says Aileen
Adams, secretary of the State and Consumer Services Agency, which oversees
the project. State officials also say data on the buildings and their
occupants will be collected to see if "green" workplaces really do make
workers healthier and more productive.
  To get the construction industry to meet the challenge, the state broke
from its tradition of awarding contracts to the bidder with the lowest
price. Instead, it told bidders it would pay $394 million for the project,
which included a premium of 5% to 6% to pay for additional costs of going
green. The state also detailed the amount of recycled content that building
materials must contain and required builders to beat California
energy-efficiency codes -- already among the nation's toughest -- by 30%.
  The state says it will recoup the money through energy savings estimated
at about $400,000 annually. Still, at that rate, it could take about 50
years to pay back the initial $20 million investment represented by the
premium.
Ultimately, two construction firms won bids for the complex to be used by
the Department of Health Services and Department of Education. Clark/Gruen
Design Build Inc., managed by Clark Construction Group Inc. of Bethesda,
Md., and Hensel Phelps Construction Co. of Greeley, Colo.
  Jon W. Ball, district manager at Hensel Phelps, says his first step was to
bring Anthony Bernheim, a nationally recognized green designer, onto the
bidding team made up of subcontractors and Hensel Phelps employees,
including Mr. Mitchell. Mr. Bernheim is a principal at the San Francisco
architecture firm SMWM. The master architectural firm for the whole complex,
set to be completed next year, is Johnson Fain Partners of Los Angeles.
  From the start, both sides were skeptical, says Marian Keeler, a colleague
of Mr. Bernheim's. After their first meeting, team members reminded Ms.
Keeler to bring her green paint to the next one. Ms. Keeler shrugged it off
as a bad joke but wondered if she was wasting her efforts.
  For their part, the builders felt Mr. Bernheim waltzed in with a list of
bells and whistles but didn't explain how they fit into a green building.
One of the enhancements was to install air vents into the floors, rather
than the ceiling, and set one inside every worker's cubicle. Floor vents
expose workers to more fresh air, Mr. Bernheim explained, because it flows
naturally upward as compared with ceiling vents that try to push the air
down.
  Mr. Bernheim introduced the builders to the criteria used in the industry
to determine how "green" a building is according to a point system that
includes three categories: indoor environment and air quality; energy
conservation and efficiency; and the reduction of waste and damage to the
Earth, as well as use of recycled materials. According to the number of
points it earns for different features, a building can get one of four
levels of certification: certified, silver, gold and platinum.
In preparing their bid at weekly meetings, subcontractors consulted vendors
and came up with hundreds of ideas but eventually submitted 110 to the state
and won the $68.7 million contract.
  A walk with Hensel Phelps's Mr. Mitchell through the new Department of
Education building shows both the creativity and challenges in earning a
green seal of approval. Mr. Mitchell calls attention to the gray carpeting
that contains 50% recycled content and is 100% recyclable. He opens doors
made of recycled sawdust panels covered in a thin veneer of blond wood.
About 90% of the materials used in the building contain recycled content --
a far higher percentage than in most buildings.
  To score points in energy efficiency, sensors near the windows set
lighting levels to complement the natural light that streams in. All desk
lights are plugged into a motion-sensitive power strip; the lights go out
when desks aren't occupied.
  In 1999, builders had to search long and hard to find many of the products
that fit the state's requirements. For the bathroom, Hensel Phelps found
only one manufacturer that made tiles with recycled content. But apparently
the industry is catching on quickly: Several tile makers stepped up their
production schedules for recycled tiles to meet purchasing deadlines a year
later, Mr. Ball says.
  Some of the changes are even being led by such unlikely players as Johns
Manville, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the project's supplier of
formaldehyde-free insulation. The Denver building-products maker was once
identified with asbestos, a fire retardant formerly used in insulation. Last
month, Johns Manville became the first maker to stop using formaldehyde in
all of its building insulation.
 "We made the switch as a direct response to the persistent concern about
formaldehyde from our customers," says company Market Manager Jo Anne
Cambruzzi, who adds the company sees a competitive advantage with
"environmentally smart" products.
 In addition, makers of more than a dozen products had to undergo tests for
the 21 harmful gases, many more than the industry standard of three or four,
Mr. Lesnet says. All Steel spent a year and paid between $15,000 to $20,000
to test its cubicle-like workstations. When a station didn't pass the test,
the company ripped it apart and retested each part until it identified which
was emitting unacceptable levels of fumes. Once the company found the
culprit, which it declined to disclose, it went back to the vendor and asked
it to find a solution. Now, all customers ordering the same model
workstation get one that meets the tougher standards of the California
complex. "The state really set a new benchmark," Mr. Lesnet says. 

ARTICLE ID: 	7703 
POSTEDBY: 	sullivan 
POSTDATE: 	2002-07-10 17:41:45 

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