Green Your Way Out of the Recession with Energy Efficiency Upgrades
Thanks to federal economic stimulus legislation, architects are looking at new opportunities to make buildings better

by Layla Bellows

How do you . . . take advantage of economic stimulus-supported energy performance auditing and building commissioning opportunities?

Summary: It’s no secret that policymakers are looking to the development of a green economy and green collar jobs as a cornerstone of recovering from the recession. A small sampling of energy efficiency retrofit funding in the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act shows the GSA’s $4 billion budget for high-performance energy upgrades, HUD’s $4 billion energy efficiency allocation, and the DOE’s $3 billion in energy efficiency block grants.

What can be harder to navigate, however, is exactly where architects fit into the equation. Stimulus funds are bolstering facets of the building industry by providing tax incentives for energy efficiency upgrades, for example, but an engineer can come in, perform an energy audit, and make recommendations for upgrades without ever bringing an architect to the table.

This is where the specialty of building commissioning enters the game. As it becomes increasingly recognized that energy-efficient systems aren’t worth the time if the building as a whole isn’t equally high-performance, building commissioning picks up where an energy audit ends by thoroughly testing a designed system and then testing how those systems work together. It’s a peer-review process that ensures the high-performance building a client has been promised is going to stay high-performance long into the future.

It’s also a specialty heavily invested in building science, and it’s growing in the profession, becoming an unavoidable topic for those architects not just interested in navigating the role energy efficiency is taking in the struggling design and construction industry, but also committed to AIA’s goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2030. Such goals, and the overall support the economic stimulus package shows for energy efficiency upgrades are all reflected in the AIA’s Rebuild and Renew government advocacy plan.

“When you look at building performance as sort of the cornerstone of our 2030 goals, you can’t have that discussion without getting into the realm of building science,” says Jessyca Henderson, AIA, director of AIA sustainability codes.

Currently, not many architects weave building science into their daily practice, which creates both challenges and possibilities. But these challenges could become a key to keeping firms viable during a pummeling design and construction industry recession. “The huge opportunity there is that the more architects seek out continuing education and even advanced degrees in building science, they will be better equipped to answer the challenges of the building science aspect of this 2030 commitment that we’ve all made,” says Henderson. “This is not meant to diminish the importance of every other aspect of architects—it’s more of an enhancement of the knowledge that architects bring to the table and an opportunity for an expansion of services.”

The work
In an ideal world, every major building jetting into a skyline would get commissioned. This is because commissioning agents review each aspect of a project, from design, to materials, selection, to construction, and serve as a third-party verification of quality.

“It’s not a design exercise; it’s peer review,” says Kevin Knight, a building scientist who heads up building enclosure commissioning at Pennsylvania-based Architectural Testing.

Whole-building commissioning is made up of mechanical commissioning and building enclosure commissioning, John Runkle, an engineer and director of forensic services at Architectural Testing, explains. Architects best fulfill the needs of building enclosure commissioning because a building’s envelope is an organ unto itself, and it takes a thorough understanding of how this organ functions to know that it will work properly.

Building enclosure commissioning as a specific practice is relatively new. Knight says in the U.S. the call for enclosure commissioning has been present for just a couple of years.

“And the amount of proposals we’re being asked to do has easily quadrupled each year,” Runkle says.

Obviously, this is not an ideal world, and most buildings in this country have not been commissioned. When existing buildings need upgrades, or even downright fail, retrocommissioning comes into play. Here, commissioning agents test all facets of the existing structure and make recommendations for improvements.

Although his company does most work on new construction, Runkle sees things changing in the near future. “I think we’re going to see a switch, especially in this economy,” he says. “I think retrocommissioning is going to be a big deal in the next couple of years.”

Wagdy Anis, FAIA, a principal at Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc., also sees retrocommissioning becoming a bigger portion of the practice—and soon.

“A lot of stimulus money is going to go to retrofitting of buildings for energy efficiency, and this is going to be a very important part of practice for architects in the coming decade,” he says. With the existing building stock so inefficient, there is also a high payback potential for building owners. “So architects need to get involved in the retrocommissioning, if you will, of building envelopes—focusing on insulation, fenestration and, of course, looking at the efficiency of the mechanical systems in conjunction with the envelope.”

The skills
Anis studied architecture at Alexandria University in Egypt, where, he says, they prepare students for design or construction. Although he did practice design for 10 years, he’s always had a focus on building enclosure and has always been heavily invested in building science.

David de Sola, AIA, a founding principle of 3ive, is an architect who straddles both the worlds of design and building commissioning. Although he got his architecture degree at MIT, which has a heavy emphasis on the scientific side of the field, he came into commissioning more because of his love for building and understanding how things work than anything else.

“I really like getting out there and watching the guys put stuff together,” he says. For him, commissioning is an opportunity both to work with a building’s designer and be out in the field to monitor what’s happening. Commissioning also informs his design practice in that it keeps him current on what matters most to him: the building exterior, how materials are evolving, how they are working together, and when they are not.

De Sola believes any architect’s entry into this side of the field begins with a similar feeling. “I think it starts with a concern and interest and a kind of passion about the way buildings perform and how they work,” he says. Similarly, Anis transitioned his career from design to building science because to get an enclosure to work right, he believes you have to understand the physics behind them.

De Sola, however, adds that a good commissioning agent also has to have excellent communication skills. “Those are the two parts: understanding and caring about how things work and also being able to communicate,” he says, “orchestrating conversations around complex matters.”

Architects who have a deep understanding of building science and place function on equal footing with form are in an excellent position to enter the expanding commissioning field and energy retrofit field, competitively broadening their skills even as the design and construction market contracts.