 Turner Constructs Sustainable Portfolio
Turner Construction launched a multi-faceted effort three years ago to green their own offices and bring sustainable practices to their clients’ projects. The ambitious plan called for an internal green policy that required all new Turner officers to be LEED® Commercial Interiors-certified or greater, more green features on client projects with an increase in the number of LEED Accredited Professionals on staff, and the implementation of a recycling program for construction waste on Turner job sites. The company also set their sites on educating students, young professionals, clients, staff, and outside users. Since making these commitments and others in 2004, the company has achieved and exceeded its goals. 
 PRACTICE TRANSITIONS
James Scheeler: An Architect who Keeps Going and Going and . . .
James A. Scheeler, FAIA, says he is a happy man. He’s content with his job as Resident Fellow, International Relations, working on contract with the AIA, forging relationships with international architects through the International Union of Architects (UIA). A former interim executive vice president of the national AIA and Kemper Award recipient, Scheeler, FAIA, is also writing a history of the AIA for the Institute’s sesquicentennial. He is painstakingly culling through records of the organization’s annual conventions to ascertain the important issues that the professional society has tackled over its 150-year history.
 best practices
Double Edged Sword: The Owner’s Separate Consultants
Consultants are an integral part of providing design services James B. Atkins, FAIA, and Grant A. Simpson, FAIA, remind us in this month’s risk-management best practice. Architects by definition do not typically provide engineering services such as mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and structural. Nonetheless, architects in general are quite accustomed to taking the prime role in design-services agreements with the owner and managing sub-prime consultants. If an owner chooses to contract directly with such consultants, though, relationships change, and so do risk-management strategies.
 Minority Architecture Students Shadow AIA Architects at Convention
Fifty-five minority architecture students from San Antonio Junior College and three high school students from the inner city’s Fox Tech High School participated in the AIA’s “Shadow an Architect” initiative at this year’s convention in San Antonio. The initiative was spearheaded by the AIA Board of Directors, Diversity Committee, and the Young Architects Forum (YAF) to reach out to underrepresented architecture students. Many Board members participated as mentors. The success of the “shadow” program in San Antonio will serve as a template for future AIA conventions, as AIA President RK Stewart, FAIA, and First Vice President Marshall Purnell, FAIA, requested that it become an annual convention event.
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