by Zach Mortice
Associate Editor

How do you . . . work with contractors and builders who are well versed in sustainability?

Summary: In the typical design and construction industry hierarchy, the goals and ideas that drive projects begin with an owner or client’s vision, are refined by an architect’s design, and then move on to the contracting industry to be executed and built. So far, the growing adoption of sustainable building practices by the contracting and building industry hasn’t changed this. What began with growing willingness on the part of clients and owners to pay premiums for sustainable features has then been championed by architects as they’ve developed new design features and techniques, and eventually permeated down to the broadest, widest level of the design and construction industry: contractors that are building up their own profession-specific sustainability expertise.

Photo courtesy of The Design Alliance Architects and Andropogon (landscape architect).

But just as in a building, the foundational base of an industry is fundamentally important. It takes a broad base of well-executed sustainable designs completed by contractors conversant in green to propel the green building movement to its full potential. Only by developing sustainable contracting expertise can the design and construction industry definitively close gaps between building design and building performance, mainstream sustainability costs, and, most importantly, communicate effectively with sustainability savvy designers.

“The success of the green building movement and the success with which it grows are going to be contingent on the key construction parties communicating with each other early on in the process,” says Brewster Earle, chairman of the Associated Builders and Contractors National Green Building Committee.

Trade associations step in
By and large, sustainability expertise has been pushed and advanced by designers and architects, and especially by organizations like the AIA. Subsequently, most sustainable building goals exist at a design scale (like energy performance, daylighting, building envelopes, and passive heating and cooling), sometimes making sustainability seem like something that happens over contractors’ heads. But a specific, self-determined role for contractors and builders exists, and professional trade organizations are developing it by offering resources and training.

Since June, the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) has been offering their Green Contractor Certification program, which certifies contracting companies’ business operations (though not the projects they work on at the jobsite) as sustainable. The program looks at how companies handle business operations issues like recycling, car pooling, and energy audits of offices. To participate, contracting firms fill out an application and provide documentation about their business practices. Then third-party building sustainability experts (including AIA members) do on-site assessments.

The ABC’s National Green Building Committee gives firms final verification and awards them the accreditation. According to the ABC, it’s the only program of its type that certifies firms, not individuals or buildings. Jen Huber, the ABC’s director of initiatives and diversity, says the ABC chose to create a workplace certification system and not a jobsite project certification system because they didn’t want to compete with more established building rating systems or professional accreditations, like the ones offered by the International Living Building Institute, the USGBC, or the Green Building Initiative.

The ABC’s training programs are offered through their 79 local chapters and feature sustainability offerings that help contractors pass professional sustainability accreditation exams and educate them on basic sustainability systems like green roofs and geothermal energy. A new ABC Web site, Greenconstructionatwork.com, offers practical tips on greening contractors’ offices, funding opportunities, a training calendar, and other online resources.

In general, the ABC and its members are still in a relatively early stage of building their sustainability expertise, says Huber. Most of the sustainability offerings they’re packaging for members point them in the direction of more established sources. “One of our goals is to help members who say: ‘I’m not doing anything in green, so where do I start? What should I do for my company? What should I be doing for my employees?,’” says Huber.

The Associated General Contractors (AGC) of America previously focused on helping members meet environmental compliance standards, but now they’re looking to fulfill more progressive goals. They’re developing (and already feature) training programs on green building rating systems like Green Globes and LEED. Their Environmental Solutions Series highlights member success stories on sustainable projects, and their AGC/Aon Build America Awards feature an environmental category. Other online resources include compliance assistance and green construction information, as well as environmental management information. The newest section of the AGC’s online sustainability resources is a Recycling Toolkit that offers case studies, external links, and AGC sustainability materials.

Closing gaps, dropping expenses
Most fundamentally, contractors’ growing familiarity with green means better communication throughout the entire building team. The best results always come from teams that speak the same language, and when architects can explain their sustainability goals to contractors easily, the finished projects will be cheaper, better, and finished faster. This kind of communication can help bridge the gap between the architect’s primary experience of sustainability, which is typically a building design as expressed in images, renderings, site plans, and energy performance data, and builders’ experience of it, expressed in bricks, mortar, concrete, and an actual building. “We have to articulate the principles [of sustainability] to the folks who are turning wrenches and banging hammers,” say Earle, who is also an energy services president of the HVAC contracting firm Comfort Systems.

Architect Chris Minnerly, AIA, of The Design Alliance Architects, and Chris Lasky, AIA, of the contracting firm the Massaro Corporation, (both based in Pittsburgh) have been exploring the frontier of interdisciplinary sustainability with their project for the Phipps Conservatory’s Center for Sustainable Landscapes. It’s a 20,000-square-foot office and research building on the Phipps’ Pittsburgh campus that will study sustainable landscape strategies like brownfield recovery, use of native and non-native plant species, green roofs, and integrating buildings with their landscape. The project, which is scheduled to begin construction this fall, is intended to meet the net-zero energy, water, and waste Living Building Challenge—the most stringent sustainability rating system that exists. Lasky’s firm has 16 LEED-AP staff members and says this expertise and the subsequent lack of a need for a sustainability “translator” has made all the difference in the project.

According to Minnerly, contractors conversant in green construction techniques are the key to closing the gap between the projected performance of a sustainable design and the actual performance of a finished building. Such gaps are the bane of progressive energy performance experts everywhere. It’s in the fine-grained details of construction that a building’s true performance is set, making all the difference between a sustainable design and a sustainable building. “We can draw a tight [building] envelope, but if you don’t build it, it’s not going to help you very much,” Minnerly says.

Close collaboration between designers and contractors on sustainability-focused projects, Minnerly says, is also the best way to gauge project costs.

Conversely, Lasky says that tight communication on sustainable projects is the best way to understand future pay-back and returns-on-investment from energy efficient buildings.

Earle says that the perceived higher cost of sustainability will come down across the entire design and construction industry as contractors become more familiar with it. As he explains, changes in the way the established contracting and building industry is asked to work brings with it cost increases from longer hours, unfamiliar materials, and apprehension about change. Once contractors (where much of clients’ and owners’ money is spent) have mainstreamed green, then everyone else will have as well. As the base of the design and construction industry, only contractors and builders can make sustainability a completely non-premium item and a completely standard practice.