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The recession has caused many owners to take a closer look at green's benefits

The American economy is in recession, and owners are under pressure to deliver projects as cheaply and quickly as possible. This has caused some tension in the design sector, with owners seeking sustainable design that brings more to the finished project than simple recognition as a green building. They are looking for operating cost efficiencies and a return on their investment for any extra costs that environmentally friendly design adds to the project.

For ENR's Top 100 Green Design Firms, 2008 was another year of growth. As a group The Top 100 generated $2.85 billion in design revenue in 2008 from projects registered with, and actively seeking certification from, third-party ratings groups under objective environmental or sustainable design standards, such as the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards. This marked a 63.9% increase over $1.74 billion in revenue from 2007 for the group. Of this 2008 revenue, $2.46 billion came from domestic projects, while $390.5 million came from international projects.

Green design accounted for 9.37% of the Top 100's total design revenue as reported on their Top 500 Design Firms surveys. But in the general building market, where green building is pervasive, the Top 100 garnered $2.71 billion in green design revenue, 25.4% of the group's total 2008 design revenue of $10.69 billion in the general building market.

The interest in green building remains high, but there may be a fall-off in green projects simply because of the sharp downturn in the economy. "While the business has shifted dramatically in the past year, sustainable design continues to resonate among owners," says Mary Ann Lazarus, director of sustainable design for HOK. "Green has become mainstream enough that now it is simply treated as another parameter of any project and assessed that way," says Scott Beckman, senior sustainability consultant for HDR.

"There has been a definite slowdown," says Kirsten Ritchie, director of sustainable design for Gensler. On the private-sector side, "there is a lot of strategizing on how to leverage sustainable design but not much is going forward," she says, adding that the federal, state, and local government markets continue to thrive.

While some projects are being put on hold or canceled, interest in sustainability is at an all-time high, says Dan Heinfeld, president of LPA Inc. "Four or five years ago, we had to go out and convince owners to use sustainable design. Now, there has been a sea change," he says. "Clients are seeking out firms to provide them with as environmentally friendly design as possible."

There still are active markets beyond the public sector. "We are seeing sustainability requirements in virtually all the [requests for proposals] we see," says Dan Harazim, associate at The S/L/A/M Collaborative. He notes almost all higher education projects call for LEED-certifiable projects, and often require the design team to have experience in LEED projects. S/L/A/M recently designed a LEED-Gold dormitory for Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass.

But for many owners building in the current economy, up-front costs are a major concern. "Clients that are going ahead on projects at this time are being extremely budget conscious," says Warren Lloyd, vice president of KJWW Engineering Consultants. "If a hospital has a choice of building LEED Silver or adding six more beds to the facility, chances are they are going to go with the beds at this point," he says.

For many owners, the green building market is either a legal or business necessity. "We find many owners that are being pushed by their own clients or by regulation to build green," says Julie Paquette, associate in the Green Integration Group at Vanderweil Engineers. She says many states are adopting more stringent energy codes, which is driving some of the sustainable market, including new regulations of the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Agency for carbon-emission assessments as part of the permitting process for new projects.

Seeking Returns

In a tough economy, many owners continue to look at costs and worry about how much cost sustainability will add to the project. The pervasiveness of the green-building market has significantly cut the premium for building green, but most designers agree there continues to be a premium to building to LEED standards.

"Building commissioning costs money, sorting construction waste costs money, registering and paperwork costs money, so there still is a premium to LEED," says Lloyd. He notes that KJWW recently expanded its headquarters and the project was certified as LEED Silver. "We watched our costs but the project still cost us a little more than if we had stuck with traditional design and construction," he says. However, the cost premium is not what it once was. "We don't fundamentally change our processes to build to LEED or LEED Silver," says Harazim. He admits that designing and building for LEED or LEED Silver adds a percent or two to the cost of a project because of registration and administrative costs. "Building to LEED Gold or Platinum takes a bit more time and money because of the work on the energy plant," he says.

Many designers point out that in most cases there is a return on the investment in building green. Spikes in energy prices over the past two years, along with a greater interest in energy independence and alternative energy, has caused owners to take a new look at sustainable design in planning their projects. "The private sector is really focused on lower operating expenses," says Lazarus.

This has led many owners to look carefully at the return on investment from green design. "In this market, owners will readily go for a design that will yield a payback within two years," says Ritchie. A payback of three to seven years will be more difficult, while a longer payout will be a tough sell outside the public sector.

This has led many designers to provide their own benchmarking of energy cost savings. "We have developed our own workflow software to show the impact of sustainability on the facility and the local community," says HDR's Beckman.

Revisions

This movement toward a more practical form of sustainability is reflected in USGBC's 2009 version of the LEED standards. The revision now makes available more points for LEED certification for energy and water conservation and expands energy-usage reporting requirements by certified buildings to benchmark the efficiency of energy-saving designs.

Many designers believe this revision is a return to the original purpose of sustainable design. "From the start, LEED was supposed to be about energy efficiency, but for some people, it became about counting points," says Lloyd. He says the new LEED revisions return to the more fundamental purposes of sustainable design. "If you are building a facility in a rural area, you can add a bike rack that will never be used, effectively buying a LEED point, or you can focus on what's really important."

Another area where the 2009 LEED revisions aims at results is the increased use of owner energy-reporting requirements. "The theme of the year is measurement," says Lazarus. She says it is important to develop a metric to measure how effective the design is in achieving efficiency goals.

One developing area of sustainable design that is gaining traction is energy use feedback. Some designers say tenants increasingly are becoming involved in their own buildings' environmental impact. Lazarus says some owners are opting for visual systems to indicate energy use or overuse, allowing workers to actively monitor energy usage and modify their own behavior. "It is like an auto dashboard indicator showing real-time gas mileage," she says.

For some owners, mere energy efficiency is not enough. There is a growing interest in net-zero buildings, where the facilities are effectively energy self-sufficient. HDR has just begun to design a projected zero-energy high-bay laboratory for Georgia Tech, says Beckman. HDR also is designing a low-energy-use ambulatory facility for the San Antonio Military Medical Center in Texas. "The client wanted to consider net-zero, but that really isn't practical for something as energy intensive as a hospital," he says.

New Life for Old Approaches

With energy efficiency now the new touchstone for sustainable design, architects are taking a new look at design and the design process. "Energy efficiency is not just a matter of what systems you install," says Heinfeld. He says that architects are beginning to look back to the way architecture was practiced decades ago. "For centuries, we built comfortable buildings with natural lighting and ventilation, but we got away from that once the price of energy dropped back in the 1950s," says Lloyd. "We are seeing a resurrection of architectural concepts for designing for the site that we haven't seen in decades," says Ritchie.

"You have to apply what the site gives you and take what the site gives you for free. Forty years ago we stopped thinking about those things," says Heinfeld. He says building orientation, natural daylight, natural ventilation and other available natural elements should be considered in the initial design concept, rather than relying on systems to do the job. "We are leery of solving sustainability problems solely with technology," he says.

This emphasis on energy efficiency and water usage has led to a more integrated approach to the design process.

"We like to be in early in the design process, as it allows us to bring something valuable to the design process, giving us a chance to be proactive rather than reactive" says Paquette. Too often, we are presented with a design with an all-glass, southern exposure and then told to design for the LEED points," says Lloyd, who agrees that the earlier engineers can contribute to the process, the more effective the design will be.

Many top architects agree with this approach. "There is a greater push toward integrated design," says Heinfeld. "You have to be able to design holistically for sustainability." This means bringing in the engineers as early in the design process as possible. He says LPA has recognized the importance of the concept and has its own mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineers on staff. "It is fundamentally so different and more effective when your design partners are in-house," he says.

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