Six steps to sustainable commercial buildings for designers

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Summary

Six steps to sustainability is a 'how to' guide for owning, developing, designing, constructing, occupying and managing sustainable commercial buildings. For each industry group, it is a compilation of input and ideas from Australian industry leaders as to what, in their experience, are the most important issues and how they can be addressed. The article walks designers through the basic requirements that need to be addressed when setting out to design successful sustainable commercial buildings.

The six steps for occupiers are:

Step 1 - Establish your company's position on sustainability

Active leadership

Active leadership is important for increasing the understanding and cultural adoption of sustainability principles, as well as for promoting related initiatives and managing related change (Lantos, 2001; Andersson & Bateman, 2000; Starik & Rands, 1995). Designing and delivering sustainable commercial buildings depends on strong leadership, starting with the design firm's partners, and the managing partner in particular. Having the managing partner on board will ensure the commitment of senior management, provide access to financial and human resources, and ensure that sustainability initiatives are recognised as relevant to business, organisational, and personal objectives and values (aspirational, strategic and operational). The managing partner will also ensure that sustainability becomes part of corporate culture.

Build the business case

The objective of the business case is to define and demonstrate the added value that designing a sustainable commercial building can contribute to your design firm. This is done by answering the following questions:

• How can sustainability add to our profit?
• How can sustainability reduce our risk?
• How can sustainability impact on the continuity of our business?
• How does sustainability fit with our beliefs and values?

See The business case for designers of sustainable commercial buildings for more information.

Make sustainability part of your design signature

It is important to identify the sustainability objectives that your firm will use as a basis for its design signature. These sustainability objectives will guide each individual project you undertake. Current rating tools may act as a benchmark, but may not provide sufficient scope for sustainability engagement or improvement over time. Sustainable design is becoming synonymous with good design. Good design is innovative and seeks to continually improve upon itself, which means setting new benchmarks for best practice. You should embed sustainability in your own organisation and lead by example.

Sustainability education across the firm

Education about sustainability needs to occur from the top down - from senior management and key decision-making staff, to junior and technical staff, as they all contribute to the design outcome. This can be done at both a professional level and a practice level, by formalising a process for internal knowledge transfer across the practice via internal workshops.

Build practice knowledge

Building up practice knowledge can be achieved by designating a sustainability research role to coordinate the development of a materials, IP and case study database, and to arrange access to appropriate external datasets and databases. It is important to develop or adopt an internal assessment process for products, materials and technologies, and to stay informed of industry trends and new technology through case studies, attending conferences and training courses, and peer-to-peer communication.

Step 2 - Promote sustainability to your client

When a client brief arrives, leaders in the design industry ask themselves 'How can we influence a sustainable outcome on this project?' If the client's brief does not set out any sustainability goals, it is up to the design team to promote sustainable outcomes, and the means of achieving those outcomes, to the client. If sustainability is in the brief, it is important to clarify the client's intentions with regard to the level of sustainability required for the project, and to clearly understand the client's performance criteria for the building.

It is important to identify your clients' knowledge gaps and to educate them about sustainability (e.g. by suggesting sustainability targets that serve and stretch their expectations), and to validate recommended strategies using life cycle costing methods and tools such as energy modelling. Sustainability inclusions and their related benefits (like improved productivity, better employee retention rates, corporate branding, lower operating and maintenance costs etc.) may be easier to justify where the client is the occupier or is undertaking the project with a major occupier already in place. However, even for speculative buildings, designers can educate clients on the value of sustainability for their investments in such areas as future-proofing, risk management, reduced operating costs and branding - for more information about the relevant value drivers for your clients, see Business cases for sustainable commercial buildings for more information.

Step 3 - Employ an integrated design process

An effective sustainable design will be integrated, with all disciplines contributing from the very start. The use of an integrated design process changes the relationship with other design consultants, creating a more participatory style of engagement and seeking to deliver solutions that are balanced across the architectural and engineering disciplines.

Select and structure the team

It is important to select a consultant team that is composed of individuals who have imagination, and who are prepared to engage in investigation and analysis, to be flexible, adaptable and positive, and to work with each other to find balanced solutions. You should avoid consultants who offer standard responses or reasons why things can't be done. This may require changing professional relationships, or changing consultancies, in order to consolidate a team with appropriate skills and experience.

There are a number of stakeholders and consultants who should be involved in all phases of the project, starting with the initial design. Although their roles may not traditionally include design input, their early and continued involvement can play a key part in ensuring a positive result. The project team should include the following representatives:

• Client: The client is the person who pays your bills and dictates the brief. They will generally be the owner, developer or occupier.
• Owner: The owner is the person who pays the bills for the completed building. It is important that owners see sustainability performance as an objective that is integrated and valuable.
• Developers and head contractors: These are often a designer's clients. Even if they are not, their involvement early in the design phase can help improve efficiency, reduce waste, and control costs by simplifying construction and advising on appropriate systems, construction methods and products.
• Facility managers: Facility managers can help the design team to identify operational oversights in design options. They can also provide feedback on materials, products and equipment, and on the processes of managing the completed building.
• The occupiers of the building: Occupiers may be able to facilitate an integrated fit-out, thus avoiding design and materials duplication. They also have to 'live' in the building, and so involvement will help them to understand how to use it most effectively.
• ESD consultant: An ESD consultant can highlight the environmental implications and issues surrounding different decisions, and can identify what the legal requirements are and where the big wins may be.
• Project manager: The project manager steers the project and can provide an overview of each aspect, including management of the budget and the input from different members of the team.
• Quantity surveyors: Quantity surveyors can give input on the cost of different design options.
• Builder: The builder can provide practical advice on systems and the implications of different construction methods.

When structuring the team, it is important to establish:

• who is acting as team leader or client advocate
• clear performance outcomes, for both the team and the building
• transparent and documented communication pathways
• a precise and clear plan of what items are to be pursued to achieve the desired outcome.

Allow sufficient time

It takes time to explore sustainability options, and to conduct analyses and feed various iterations back into the design, sometimes using design criteria and performance requirements that promote innovative or unconventional responses. Ideally, consultants' fees should cover the additional time and work that is required. However, as the design team becomes more experienced, no additional fees should be required; just better outcomes.

Hold strategic design workshops

An effective integrated design process requires interaction between team members. Design workshops, or charrettes, in which the team can interact to test design and servicing concepts, air possible problems, and draft design solutions, are one such approach. It may take a few sessions to work through issues and to undertake basic research to test different options. This is different from a traditional consultants' meeting, in that ideas are offered at the table, not taken back to a specialist in the office for technical input.

Integrated design does require different management techniques - for more information, see Design and sustainable commercial buildings for more information.

Step 4 - Clearly set out performance targets

Clarify and adjust budgets

It is important to clarify the client's brief with regard to the level of sustainability required for the project. You should make sure that the client understands any implications for fees and design time, as well as the benefits associated with integrated design. Fees should be adjusted to reflect the early design phase workload associated with the integrated design process, research and reporting. It can be useful to demonstrate the financial benefits to the client by using existing case studies or experience. A separate budget for sustainable outcomes should be identified, so that they are not costed out of the project during budget revisions. It is also important to continually monitor the design development process to ensure that sustainability features are incorporated and not forgotten. From a management point of view, value adding to a project requires a different type of management approach.

Life cycle costing

It is important to establish a life cycle costing methodology for projects. This ensures that sustainability options are costed and 'valued' appropriately. Separate budgeting also aids financial transparency and the evaluation of sustainability inclusions over the asset life span. You should analyse and test options, and combinations of options, and/or run through a computer analysis to determine a merit-order list from which to make decisions about what elements to include.

Step 5 - Embed sustainability objectives and targets in the contract documents

Contract performance

All contracts, from client-consultant contracts through to contractor-subcontractor contracts, should include sustainability performance requirements that are focused on either methodology (e.g. construction waste minimisation) or outcomes (e.g. achieving a particular building rating).

Contract bidders need to be briefed about the sustainability expectations for each project. Tender responses should be assessed using a check-list to identify and track sustainability inclusions, and this check-list should be included in the tender evaluation process. If project managing the project, you should link contract payments to the provision of documentation to support compliance with contract sustainability inclusions. In addition, you should ensure that a documentation audit trail is provided to substantiate the sustainability outcome, especially if you are seeking a particular building rating.

Provision should also be made within the contracts to ensure that the ongoing operation of the building will reach its potential in sustainability measures once occupied. Provision should made for sufficient post-completion commissioning and systems finetuning, operations and maintenance guides, user training, and building owner manuals.

Other operational strategies, such as green lease contracts, also enforce sustainability objectives (for more information on green leases, see Investa green lease guide or Commonwealth green lease schedules).

Step 6 - Measure, review, and learn

Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) is an integral part of sustainable building projects. POE performance measurements, be they of building plant by the commissioning consultant and facility manager, or of occupier satisfaction surveys, provide valuable feedback to all participants of the project. This feedback can help measure the success or otherwise of the design and project implementation, which is important for the ongoing development and progression of this new field.

POE activities are often independently carried out and the performance data is held as commercial-in-confidence. However, it is important for participating designers to have feedback, as this is the best way for innovation to be assessed and improved upon, and for building designs to deliver their full performance potential.

Designers need to ensure that they are included in the POE process and receive feedback relating to all aspects of the building's performance after its completion. Internally, and with clients and other members of the project team, designers can undertake project reviews to consolidate 'lessons learned' and to identify where strategic changes can occur to improve processes and outcomes on the next project.

These processes will all contribute to individual and organisational learning, thus accelerating the support for, and uptake of, sustainable design in a sector that is generally conservative and risk adverse, and which, in relative terms, has a long lead time and low turnover.

References

Andersson, L.M. & Bateman, T.S. (2000), 'Individual environmental initiative: championing natural environmental issues in US business organizations', Academy of Management Journal, 43(4), 548-570.

Lantos, G.P. (2001), 'The boundaries of corporate social responsibility', Journal of Consumer Marketing, 18(7), 595-630.

Starik, M. & Rands, G.P. (1995), 'Weaving an integrated web: multilevel and multisystem perspectives of ecologically sustainable organizations', The Academy of Management Review, 20(4), 908-935.