Six Essential Elements for High Performance Buildings

Lean to be Green is a concept that involves implementing LEAN thinking to achieve paradigm shift levels of building performance improvement.  By eliminating wasteful project delivery practice that is estimated to be 10% of the total cost of delivering a project, it will be feasible to build NetZero buildings for NetZero additional capital (Net 0–0)

To achieve such a lofty goal it is going to take leadership, lean project delivery processes like Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) and a major transformation of the building industry.

The 6 Essential Elements to deliver high performance building projects are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIfCD5Abtpw

1. Leadership: New Thinking for a Sustainable Building Industry 

To transform the building industry we need leaders who are willing to challenge the status quo and adopt new lean processes like Integrated Project Delivery.

“ By using the IPD methodology, our team was able to significantly reduce project costs, meet the Owners project requirements of delivering a LEED Gold Signature Building on a very tight budget, while having a process that needed to withstand the scrutiny of a financial and process audit.”   Director, Sherman Kreiner

2: Integrated Project Delivery (IPD)

To fix a broken industry we need to apply lean project methodology to eliminate waste in the way we deliver projects. The traditional transactional contracting method of selecting contractors by low first cost adds a minimum of 10% cost and additional risk.

3.  Integrated Design   

To create high performance building at no additional capital cost the integrated design process helps to make trade-offs between building systems to achieve higher performance. The additional cost of a high performance envelope is directly offset by saving in mechanical and electrical equipment.

4. Sustainability

If you are already designing buildings to achieve total life cycle cost performance, adopting sustainability is a natural progression and  LEED Gold is easy to achieve at very little if any additional capital cost.

In 2004 when the LEED standard came along it was not much of a challenge for Innovation Place to add sustainable design to the project delivery process. It was easy to go GREEN when you already understood Integrated Design and Total Life Cycle Cost building development.

5. Commissioning - Integrating Quality into Building Projects

Commissioning as defined by ASHRAE Guideline 0 – 2005 is a quality-based method to achieve successful projects, reduce the cost of construction and increase value to owners and occupants.

Saskatchewan Government Services has tested out commissioning on a pilot project and discovered that it helped to achieve all of these benefits.

That is why they have adopted formalized commissioning for all of their projects.

6. Innovation 

The building industry needs innovative thinking to achieve much higher levels of performance. It takes leadership to challenge design standards, develop new products and design innovative new systems.   At the U of W Richardson College of the Environment Project innovation in design was achieved by adopting 3 level (Red-Yellow-Green) air flow system and recovering heat off of fume hood exhaust.  These relatively low cost strategies will enable this facility to possibly become “North America’s Most Energy Efficient Laboratory Building.” 

Lean to be Green Summary

To achieve truly sustainable buildings we need to move beyond LEED Gold and optimize these 6 Essential Elements to achieve much higher levels of building performance. To achieve a sustainable building industry we need to make Net 0 economical and contagious so that we hit the critical tipping point before it is too late.

Remember that there is no life to be had or money to be made on a dead planet!