Committee releases guidelines for building ‘green’

// news / stanford report - april 11, 2006

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2002/april17/guidelines-410.html
written by Barbara Palmer

The first formal guidelines for incorporating sustainable -- or "green" -- building principles into campus construction and operations have been published, members of the committee that produced the guidelines have announced. Robert Reidy, vice provost for land and buildings, chairs the 14-member Environmental Stewardship Committee, made up of administrators, faculty, staff and students.

In the guidelines, the term "sustainable building" is defined as a building that uses energy, water and other natural resources efficiently and provides a safe and productive indoor environment.

Ted Giesing, a project engineer with Capital Planning and Management, was one of lead authors of the sustainability guidelines. He is pictured here at the Jasper Ridge Biological Reserve.

The 38-page The Guidelines for Sustainable Buildings, described as a "communication and working tool," outlines ways in which sustainability issues can be incorporated into existing design and construction processes. A technical section lists strategies for improving sustainability in site design and planning, energy use, water management, the use of building materials and resources and indoor environmental quality.

The guidelines also contain a section addressing ways to make decisions about trade-offs among conflicting priorities. "At Stanford, sustainability is to be considered at the same level as traditional competing priorities such as cost, quality and schedule," the guidelines state.

The guidelines make sure that sustainability is at the table and is an equal player," said Langston Trigg, associate vice provost for land and buildings. Historically, Stanford has done a fairly good job of incorporating sustainable building and environmental techniques on campus, he said. "But we can do a better job."

Trigg credited a group of "very articulate and very concerned students" with leading the effort to create the new guidelines.

Students for a Sustainable Stanford, a coalition made up of graduate and undergraduate students, was organized two years ago to lobby the administration for a commitment to sustainability, said member Audrey Chang, a graduate student in the School of Engineering. "Green building is something we're interested in," she said. "We started asking ourselves, why aren't we seeing this on campus?"

The students began to educate themselves about building processes on campus through meetings with administrators, including Reidy and Trigg, Chang said. They also met with Provost John Etchemendy and President John Hennessy to voice their opinions.

The administrators listened, Chang said. Last May, Reidy established the committee that created the guidelines. Chang. Susan Kulakowski, campus energy manager. and Ted Giesing, a project engineer in Facilities Operations, were the document's lead authors.

"It's great that they were willing to listen to us and that something came out of it," Chang said. "They've shown that this is something that matters to them, environmentally and economically." The student group backed the new guidelines "a hundred percent," Chang said.

In creating the Stanford-specific guidelines, the committee reviewed existing guidelines for sustainable design, including those published by the City of New York and the University of Minnesota. They also reviewed the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards created by the U.S. Green Building Council.

One of the thorniest issues the committee faced was whether or not to adopt a point system that certifies buildings, like the LEED standards. Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology both have adopted the LEED standards, Chang said.

Not adopting a point system "was one of the hardest things for us, as a student group, to get past," said Chang. But in developing the guidelines, committee members recognized situations where using the point system at Stanford wouldn't result in more sustainable buildings, she said. For instance, the new field station at Jasper Ridge won't have an air conditioning system, which will result in "huge energy savings," she said. Under the LEED system, points are awarded for efficient air-conditioning systems, not for having no air conditioning system at all, she said.

The guidelines also create a "Sustainability Coordinator," an appointed position, to act as a campus-wide teacher and facilitator. Giesing, who will continue to work as a project engineer, will fill the half-time position.

Giesing studied environmental engineering as an undergraduate at California Polytechnic State University and worked in environmental management at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore before coming to Stanford in July 2000.

One of the biggest challenges will be incorporating sustainability within the constraints of buildings like laboratories, he said. "There are a lot of building standards and codes we adhere to. There are a lot of situations where you really have to understand the program of the building," he said. Among competing interests, "safety is the biggest issue."

A major strength of the guidelines is that they address specific campus issues -- including the General Use Permit approved by the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors in 2000, he said. The guidelines will be given to architects and contractors working on campus projects and the checklists that already are in use by Facilities Operations staff in completing projects will be updated so that the goals of sustainability will be considered in each phase, he said.

The concerted effort to integrate sustainability principles into the very beginning of the design and construction process is one of the most important features of the guidelines, said Philippe Cohen, director of the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve and a committee member.

Another is the creation of tools to measure progress and improvement in sustainability, he said. One tool is A "Performance Indicator Database" of information about existing buildings and performance benchmarks for various types of building stock.

The database will provide a standard for measuring future progress, Giesing said.

"I would have liked to have seen a more solid commitment with deadlines," Chang said. "But this is a really great step. You could push the envelope some, but this is the farthest that Stanford has ever taken this."

The guidelines are posted on the Capital Planning and Management website at the bottom of the page found at http://cpm.stanford.edu/process_new/%20Sustainbale_Brochure.pdf.