Case study SERA Architects Inc
John Echlin is design principal at SERA Architects in Portland, Oregon.6 Echlin joined the firm in 1997 as director of design, and brought with him a strong sustainability focus. He spoke of the firm's marketing transition as the push for sustainable design gets ready to enter its second decade We're really transitioning from short-term, turnaround speculative projects and clients to long-term owners. The majority of our clients have legacy ownership interest, whether public or private. There's...
Mixeduse development
Mixed-use projects encompass real estate developments with planned integration of some combination of retail, office, residential, hotel, recreation or other functions. A 2006 survey sponsored by four real estate development organizations found that more than 25 percent of members' business was already in mixed-use projects, with 35 percent saying that it accounted for more than half their business.15 Clearly, multiple-use projects are an important component of today's business environment. For...
Assessing sustainable design marketing strategy
Certainly for most firms, the key marketing strategy of our time is focus and differentiate. Most firms know their areas of focus fairly well, so the issue becomes how to differentiate a firm's capabilities in sustainable design from other firms'. Here are some suggestions for marketers of design and construction services. Often a firm needs first to conduct a strategic review of its capabilities and opportunities using a SWOT Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats 10.1 Originally used...
Case study Mithun
Based in Seattle, Washington, Mithun shows how a leading sustainable architecture, urban planning, interior design and landscape architecture firm applies these principles. The firm's President and CEO, Bert Gregory, emphasizes that firms must invest in efforts like extensive staff training, conference and event speaking engagements and in opportunities that encourage collaboration and team effort - all while pursuing internal research and development using the firm's money and not the...
Demand for specific green building measures in LEEDNC
Using statistics from the USGBC, we can profile specific green building measures that are used by the green building market. The current split of LEED-NC 7.1 The Evergreen State College campus expansion project features a green roof on the LEED-NC Gold-certified project. Courtesy of DPR Construction. 7.1 The Evergreen State College campus expansion project features a green roof on the LEED-NC Gold-certified project. Courtesy of DPR Construction. version 2.1 certified projects is about 41...
Public facilities
The market for green buildings for public agencies is perhaps the largest single green market in the US, and it is growing rapidly. Based on the combined office, public safety and recreation segments, the market exceeds 43 billion per year, much of it in smaller buildings. Whether for office buildings, public safety and justice, libraries, cultural or recreational projects, laboratories or public housing, there is a rising demand to meet the increasing array of public policy directives to...
Integrating sustainable design into marketing programs
How should marketers advise their firms to take advantage of market opportunities in sustainable design First of all, marketing plans have to explicitly promote sustainable design as a major focus of the firm second, market research has to yield profitable opportunities in selected market segments and among targeted clients. Marketing plans are by nature speculative. They take what we know, add what we don't know but can guess at, and then come up with a game plan for the future that we intend...
Benefits that build a business case
The business case for green development is based on a framework of benefits economic, financial, productivity, risk management, public relations and marketing, and funding.9 Table 3.1 presents an outline useful for understanding the wide-ranging benefits of green buildings, which are examined in detail in the following section. As we will see in Chapter 9, increased economic benefits are the prime driver of change in all new innovations for green buildings, these benefits take a variety of...
Educational buildings
The value of educational construction exceeded 50 billion annualized in 2005.5 Imagine that this market consists of 2,500 to 5,000 buildings valued at 10 million to 20 million each. Now further imagine that eventually 625 to l,250 of those will be LEED-registered each year, given that LEED aims to address the top 25 percent of the market in each building sector. Therefore, in 2007 and 2008, based on current market data, I estimate that about l2 to l4 percent of all LEED-registered projects will...
Green building market leaders
Among the large architectural firms, giant HOK ranked first of the largest architect engineer firms in the US, based on 2005 billings 1 stands out for its early commitment to green buildings, sharing of resources with others similarly committed in the late 1990s and authorship of one of the leading texts on green buildings.2 A clear indicator of a firm's commitment is the number of LEED Accredited Professionals LEED APs among its staff. HOK had more than 450 LEED APs on its staff as of...
Changing the DNA of a major construction firm Swinerton Builders
For this book, we interviewed Mark Gudenas, National Marketing Director of Swinerton Incorporated, an employee-owned general contractor headquartered in San Francisco.12 In 2005, Swinerton ranked 18th among general contractors in the US with about 1.2 billion in revenues.13 Gudenas spoke of the long evolution at Swinerton toward becoming focused on green building. This story can be used by any design, development or construction firm to accelerate their progress toward embedding sustainability...
The LEED rating systems
The essence of LEED, and its particular genius, is a point-based rating system that allows vastly different green building measures to be compared with one resulting aggregate score. LEED accomplishes this by rating all buildings across five categories of concern using key environmental attributes in each category. The five major issues for rating green buildings are creating sustainable sites, conserving water, conserving energy, using materials and resources efficiently and ensuring good...
Green hotels and resorts
Green hotels are beginning to be accredited under the LEED standard. As of March 2007, 22 hotels were registered under the LEED-NC system for future certification.26 The first LEED-certified hotel was the University of Maryland University College UMUC Inn amp Conference Center, operated by Marriott International, which received its designation in 2005. A 226-room Hilton Hotel in Vancouver, Washington, owned by the city, received a LEED Silver designation in 2006. In this case, the cost premium...
Incentives and impediments to green buildings
Still, there are barriers to the widespread adoption of green building techniques, technologies and systems, some of them related to real-life experience and the rest to perception in the building industry that green buildings still add extra cost. This is surprising because senior executives representing architectural engineering firms, consultants, developers, building owners, corporate owner-occupants and educational institutions have held positive attitudes about the benefits and costs of...
Seven Keys to Sustainable Design Marketing
There is no single competitive response to the growing green building market that is right for every design firm. Your firm needs to consider its response in the light of the 4 C's - the clarity of its strategic vision, your capability to execute the vision, the captal available for marketing and sustainability initiatives, and the character of the firm's principals - their willingness to walk the talk of green design. Nevertheless, a conscious choice among strategies and a clear focus on one...
Understanding segmentation targeting positioning and
A marketer's job is always fraught with difficulty. How to make a purple cow something remarkable out of a pink sow something ordinary seems to be the perpetual task of the marketing arm of the firm. In today's marketing environment, a firm must be remarkable just to get some attention, hence the purple cow analogy. 6 The chapter introduces some of the basic concepts of modern marketing and applies them to marketing green buildings, including design services, construction services, technologies...
Case study Turner Construction Company
Turner Construction is the largest commercial construction firm in the US, with annual revenues of more than 7 billion in 2005.10 In 2004, Turner's then-CEO Thomas Leppert announced a formal commitment Turner Green to sustainable construction and business practices, as a means to continue strengthening Turner's leadership position.11 Leppert asserted that Turner's plan to be the leading responsible builder is good for the environment, and also for building owners, developers and occupants....
Green commercial interiors
Green commercial interiors is a field coming into its own. Most of the focus of green design to date has been on new construction and major renovations of typically large buildings. For example, the average size of LEED-certified buildings is about 110,000 square feet 10,000 sqm .Yet most commercial interiors projects are smaller and take place in a shorter time frame, compared with the design and construction of new buildings. Nevertheless, there are important business drivers for green...
Large public facilities transportation and sports
Large public facilities such as stadiums and airports are beginning to look at sustainable design as part of the public process for gaining approvals for these very large, multi-year projects. For example, the Washington Nationals new 600 million baseball stadium in the District of Columbia is expected to be a LEED-certified project when it opens in 2008. In Minneapolis, developers of a new stadium for the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Twins propose to achieve LEED certification for...
Technological changes
Many green building measures, such as underfloor air distribution systems, photovoltaics, rainwater harvesting, onsite waste treatment and green roofs, are becoming mainstream technologies and are building a strong track record in design and use. As a result, these measures are gaining a strong, supportive infrastructure of salespeople and suppliers, a better cost history, an understanding of how to bid and install them, and a growing number of advocates among architects and engineers who are...
Info 1
Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher American National Standards Institute American Society for Heating, Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Building Design amp Construction magazine Building Owners and Managers Association Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment California Public Employees Retirement System Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Collaborative for High-Performance Schools Energy Policy Act of 2005 U.S. Federal U.S....
LEED Rating Systems Comparison
This appendix provides a comparison of all four major LEED rating systems, including the most often-used of the USGBC's, LEED-NC, which represents 75 percent of registered projects and 77 percent of all certified projects, through the end of March 2007. Table 1 shows how each of the four major systems, LEED-NC, LEED-CI, LEED-CS and LEED-EB, shares the same credit structure and many of the same credits. Additional USGBC rating systems not included here are LEED-H and LEED-ND, both of which are...
Highrise housing
As a specialized market segment for green buildings, housing is just starting to develop. Multiple-unit above three stories residential LEED registrations are running at about 3.5 percent of the total, or about 175 of the initial 5,000 registrations through February 2007. The first LEED-Gold high-rise apartment project, The Solaire in New York City, was certified at the end of 2003. Another New York City high-rise apartment, The Helena, was certified at LEED Gold in 2005. In Portland, Oregon,...
Typical green building measures
While there's no such thing as a typical green building, there are specific design and construction measures which are used in many green buildings. If you are a designer, understanding these measures will help you work with green builders, building owners, developers,facility managers, government officials, business clients, nonprofit executives or just interested stakeholders in a green building program. Based on an analysis of the first 450 LEED-NC-certified projects, the following technical...