“The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the average American, but we don’t buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff…It’s true that we do spend a lot more than the average family. Yet the one truly expensive line item in our budget is our airplane (which, by the way, was manufactured in France by Dassault Aviation SA), and those annual costs are mostly for fuel (from the Middle East). It’s just crazy to believe that any of this is more beneficial to our economy than hiring more teachers or police officers or investing in our infrastructure.“

Investing in our infrastructure does more than create jobs. Miller Hull is best known for its design of award-winning public buildings. For me, there are no projects that are more rewarding. But there seems to be a trend where these public projects are seen as unnecessary and the first thing to be cut. There is a special session of the legislature happening in Olympia right now where this is being discussed. Will we have to let our vital infrastructure projects deteriorate? How can we cut higher education any further? This is not just about creating jobs; these public projects are needed to uphold the quality of life for our residents, and to attract outside investment in our state.

I chair the Public Policy Board of the local Seattle chapter of the AIA and the topic of taxes is the hottest thing on our agenda. Of course nobody now uses the word “tax.” Instead, what we are talking about is now referred to as “revenue.” Why are we so afraid of talking about taxes and investing in our society? For decades taxes were modified continually to respond to the economic condition of the country. Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in eight years. Nixon and Ford fought for higher taxes. John F. Kennedy secured a huge tax cut (to lower the upper bracket to 70 percent!). It didn’t matter what your party was, it was just another tool to balance the budget.

As Nick so matter-of-factly lays out in his article, the current tax policies are upside down. He admits to paying 11 percent on an eight figure income. How can this be fair? Higher taxes on the wealthy can
put Americans back to work, which not only stimulate the economy but make our country a better place through the betterment of infrastructure projects and the creation of beautiful public spaces. Taxes is a word that needs to be discussed openly and intelligently at the state and federal levels. I only wish there were more smart people like Nick Hanauer involved in these discussions.

The design for the Bullitt Center has been an integrated process — seeking to reduce energy consumption through a balanced contribution of high efficiency envelope and mechanical system, passive systems such as operable windows and exterior blinds, lighting power reductions, reductions in plug loads through technology and controls, and operational changes by building tenants.

The resulting building is projected to use as much energy as can be produced on site by a rooftop PV array:  approximately 230,000 kWh/year, for an EUI of 16 kBtu/SF-year when averaged across the Gross Floor Area (GSF). This extraordinarily low energy use is less than 20% of a typical Seattle office building. It is well below the level of any comparable North American office building and is consistent with what we know about the highest performing buildings in Europe. When considering the Treated Floor Area (TFA) — a European measure of interior occupied floor area — the EUI is approximately 21 kBtu/TFA-yr.

Passive House (or Passivhaus) has been discussed recently as a higher standard than net zero, or at least the best methodology for achieving the low energy use necessary for achieving net zero. In fact, there have been specific references to Passive House and the Bullitt project in published discussions in Fast Company and ArchDaily. While we welcome critiques of the project, the discussion in these blog posts is not as informed as it could be on the relative merits of this design approach.

Passive House methodology seeks to create energy efficiency through a high-performance building envelope coupled with heat recovery on ventilation air. By incorporating these strategies, the heating and cooling equipment is downsized considerably. Because of its strong focus on the building envelope, Passive House is sometimes perceived as the “gold standard” for an efficient building design, or at least an efficient envelope. Passive House has not gained acceptance in the US for non-residential buildings, but has a track record in Europe with some certified projects.

Despite our understanding of Passive House concepts, the criteria used for certification has been unclear. In particular, how well does it apply to an urban all-electric office building, where plug loads dominate the energy use? Passive House has three primary criteria for certification: it sets limits on heating and cooling loads, envelope air infiltration, and overall primary (source) energy use. The design estimates for Bullitt show that it is well under the Passive House limits for heating and cooling loads, but it doesn’t meet the overall energy limit of 120 kWh/m² of TFA on primary energy use, which converts to 14.1 kBtu/TFA-yr for an all-electric grid-tied building. Bullitt’s heating and cooling energy use only about 5% of the building’s energy use, and the biggest end uses in the proposed project are office equipment — computers, monitors, servers, printers, copiers, appliances, elevators, control systems, and other miscellaneous devices (typically called plug loads) — and electric lighting. Together, these account for almost 2/3 of the building’s energy budget and are not well addressed in Passive House. We were wondering how this made sense — how could adhering to Passive House improve Bullitt’s performance given that most of the energy was in non-HVAC end uses? What are built Passive House projects doing to meet this overall energy limit, if they actually are meeting it in practice? We were very interested.

Just our luck, the Passive House Northwest fall meeting was held in Seattle this year, and the conference topic was “Beyond Single Family Residential.” In one presentation, an example end use energy profile of a Passive House-compliant office building in the Pacific Northwest was described in detail. The speaker prefaced this data by admitting these were extremely aggressive goals requiring significant behavioral and cultural change. A quick comparison of the Bullitt Center’s end use breakdown with this prototypical PH project yields some surprising results.

First, Bullitt’s estimated annual heating and cooling energy is less than 1/4 of that in the Passive House example. Could this be right? How can a high-performance building standard, which has a laser focus on the building envelope, be so generous on the heating side?

The predicted heating energy use of the Bullitt Center is 84% better than the Passivhaus standard (0.75 kbtu/tfa sf/yr vs 4.75 kbtu/tfa sf/yr). In addition, the Bullit Center’s heating, cooling, ventilating and pumping energy combined are only 11% more than the Passivhaus standard for just heating. In our opinion, we have wrung the vast majority of the efficiency out of the building envelope, heating systems, cooling systems and ventilation systems.

Just as striking is the comparison of plug energy and lighting energy in the two examples. Bullitt’s lighting energy is 60% greater than the PH example. This is even though Bullitt’s lighting power density is already at an astonishingly low 0.4 W/SF (current code is 0.9 W/SF). But even with this supposed bust on lighting energy, Bullitt is still well under the PH example when including HVAC and lighting only.

The real source of the discrepancy is plug energy. Plug energy in Bullitt is over four times as large as in the Passive House example. In the design for Bullitt, we have assumed state-of-the art equipment efficiencies but have also allowed for high densities of computing that is typical of modern-day commercial office occupancies. In order to meet the level of plug energy identified for the PH prototype, the owner would need to limit the tenant pool only to organizations that use minimal computing energy, or to require cloud computing which would then just move the energy consumption off site.

To put the numbers in perspective, when we started design on the Bullitt Center, our firm spent time measuring our own computing equipment energy use. We found that our EUI for just workstations, monitors, servers and printers (not including copiers, kitchen uses, elevator, etc.) was about 25 kBtu/TFA-yr. So far we’ve succeeded in reducing this by 40% — to 15 kBtu/TFA-yr — through hardware and operational changes, and we have a roadmap to take it further down to about 7 kBtu/TFA-yr in the next two years. At this point we would just begin to be able to inhabit the Bullitt Center, but certainly not the PH prototype.

One thing we learned from this in-house exercise is that office equipment is currently the area of greatest innovation and change in commercial building energy use. Justifiably, the focus in the design for Bullitt was to minimize energy use in the base structure, which will have a much longer lifespan, and allow the more quickly-changing technology — such as office equipment — to catch up. It is possible that over the next 10 years, with the rapid pace of improvements in computing, Bullitt could start to become a net energy exporter. If the project had been designed along the lines of the Passive House example, the tenant base would have been limited to only those entities with minimal computing needs in their daily work, and there would have been little opportunity for improvement over time.

The intent here is not to dismiss Passive House as a design approach. In fact, the Passive House conference we attended confirmed for us that the design strategies and technologies employed in the Bullitt Center are consistent with Passive House approaches in Europe. But the lesson we take from this comparison is that there are no simple solutions for the path to net zero, and no single best approach to meeting that goal. Obviously, an approach that ignores occupancy types and densities, operating schedules, and other activities in the building contradicts the tenets of low/no energy design. For a multi-story urban office building in Seattle, the approach we have used is one that our best estimates tell us will work. Of course, the proof will come once the project is operational. Unlike any other high performance rating system or standard that we know of, including Passive House, meeting the Living Building Challenge requires actual performance when in operation, not an estimate of the energy balance made during design.

What we also take away is that we can work collaboratively to advance the industry and culture around low-energy and net-zero buildings. We have been lucky to work with a visionary client, forward-thinking developers and other design consultants, and a contractor willing to look at different ways of doing things. We have sought advice from local, national, and international practitioners engaged in high performance buildings. We are enjoying the opportunity to see how other projects in the Northwest are approaching similar challenges. In turn, we hope some of the lessons we have learned and passed on will be useful for others.

Miller Hull offers a Length of Service Award when employees reach their five and 10 year anniversaries at the firm in the form of a travel stipend. The purpose is to get away, to get inspired and to bring back renewed enthusiasm, energy, and a fresh perspective. The obvious route for an architect is to go see any of the myriad of architectural gems, old and new, the world over. But with the firm’s blessing (and a bit in advance of my 10-year anniversary), I was able to explore my other passion: wildlife conservation. It’s not such a far stretch. Sustainable building and environmental sensitivity is a requirement of architecture today and a signature of Miller Hull’s work before it was ever fashionable. As human populations swell, communities develop and the natural environment — its flora and fauna — can be, and often is, sacrificed. Deforestation occurs. Water sources are cut off. Migration paths are blocked. Animals go extinct. Architecture and conservation are intertwined and in Africa, the human — wildlife conflict is a problem of outstanding proportions.

The lion population is decreasing at an alarming rate: from 200,000 lions throughout the continent of Africa in the 1970s to somewhere between 20,000-30,000 today. That’s a decrease of 80-90 percent in just four decades. Several countries have lost their lion populations completely, and several others are expected to lose their populations in the next decade if nothing is done to save this most iconic of all animals.

ALERT is trying to save lions and offers an amazing opportunity for people to lend a hand while experiencing travel in a completely unique way. You work hard, really hard. Our work days were 12 hours long starting at 6:30am, and in two weeks we only had one afternoon off on the 10th day (come to think of it, maybe the schedule is not so different from architecture!) You work alongside the local staff and get to hear their stories, share laughs, and make friends. You also work alongside other volunteers from all over the world, bonded in our love and appreciation for this vulnerable species. And, yes, we got to work with lions — something I never imagined I would ever have the honor of doing.

We went on daily walks with the cubs (it gets them out in the bush and hones their hunting skills), and collected behavioral data. We cleaned lion enclosures, prepared the meat they eat, repaired fences and roads, and went on snare sweeps. We were privileged to take out some of the adolescent lions at night and witness them stalking and successfully killing prey. We were able to go out with the research team to collect data on ALERT’s Stage 2 release pride, the Ngamo pride. We also had the opportunity to spend time with the four rescued elephants at the park, and go horseback riding through the bush.

Working up close and personal with lions is without a doubt, a top highlight of my life that will be difficult to out-do. It is absolutely magical to interact with these amazing cats. But what I didn’t anticipate is how this would alter my perspective on travel. Maybe we didn’t see all the major sites the guidebooks recommend, but we stayed in one place and really got to know it until it felt like home. We met the people who work, live, and struggle in a country that has seen, and continues to see, so much turmoil. And yet, you realize everyone is the same, and everyone wants the same things: decent work at a decent wage, the ability to feed their families and send their children to school, the need to find some laughter and joy in life.

We had minimal internet access, we had power outages daily, and we had few useful tools for repair work. We were hot, sweaty, dirty, and exhausted, and yet there was nowhere else we’d rather be. The only thing that mattered was the lions and to know that, maybe, in some tiny way, we were helping this amazing species to not only survive, but to once again thrive.

And ultimately, it wasn’t just about the lions. It’s also about the human spirit. Meeting people who have less than we do in the form of possessions and freedoms, and yet their spirit and good nature soared above those with seemingly so much more. It was a beautiful lesson to learn in a severely damaged country, where there is a group of dedicated people working tirelessly to save Africa’s heritage.

If you’d like to know more about our trip, ALERT, and the perilous future of lions, follow our personal blog: Africa or Bust!

Usually Miller Hull works to bring sustainability to the built environment, but at least once a year we focus our collective energy towards restoring critical habitat for threatened animals with the Columbia Land Trust. Getting to know this nonprofit group and its dedicated staff over the years gives me hope for this world! They have conserved over 4,000 acres along the Lower Columbia River through outright land purchase and collaboration with adjacent landowners and organizations.

Last weekend, a gang of us from the office and our families played wildlife biologist and joined them for our 8th annual stewardship project. Our work with them has ranged from restoring marshland habitat for trumpeter swans between Willapa Bay and the Pacific Ocean, to ripping down barns and restoring farmland back to native habitat, to tooling along the Klickitat River on bicycles and hopping off to pull out invasive non-native plants. I love these weekends because we experience exceedingly beautiful, sometimes remote, areas of Washington and get an in depth lesson on the area’s ecology from our CLT friends.

Our project last weekend was to document the nests of the threatened western gray squirrel (not to be confused with the more common California ground squirrels that are eating your tulip bulbs right now) in a 50 acre swath of Oregon white oak and ponderosa pine forest near Bowman Creek in SE Washington, and to restore part of the property by ripping out a half mile of abandoned barbed wire fencing. Who knew that western gray squirrels even existed, let alone their important role maintaining oak woodlands and as an indicator species for this type of woodland? Not as strenuous as some of our work parties in the past, but on this one we became experts on the finer points of shelter nests versus platform nests while the younger set romped through the forest discovering salamanders, crickets with butterfly-like wings, a praying mantis and building forts. We found 110 nests!

I always look forward to Columbia Land Trust weekend. Sometimes it’s hard to break away from all of the rest of our responsibilities and drive to some of these remote locations but man, is it worth it! Not only do I get to contribute to the overall good of our environment but I get to hang out with some of my favorite people.

Left Brain
The video clip captures the external louvers on the west facade at the moment they are deployed. The louvers manage the most challenging sun angles, and on a typical sunny summer day the louvers deploy at solar noon and then incrementally adjust to prevent direct sun from penetrating the envelope. Conversely, the system adapts to welcome solar gain and daylight to passively heat the space during the wet winter months. The louvers can also be adjusted by each office occupant to manage glare as necessary.

The second camera angle in the video shows the south facade’s motorized louver system. The louvers are designed to improve daylight distribution by acting as a series of small light shelves that reflect light up onto the highly reflective stretched fabric ceiling. As with the west facade, the southern louvers also periodically adjust throughout the day to optimize the amount of light that spreads across the ceiling and into the office spaces.

Right Brain
When I first heard that Nic had captured the west entry of the building on video, my left brain was anxious to see the motorized louver system in action. However, I quickly learned that the video did much more than document technology at work. I was struck by the way that the architecture interacted with the site’s micro climate. The building that emerges from this video is not static and stoic, but dynamic and intimately linked in a dance with the elements. The facade both reacts to the sun as it moves across the sky like a modern sun dial and interacts with the reclaimed water pond as it reflects the building, trees, sky and infinitely variable wind conditions on site.

Why did I react to this video so positively? Of course, I spent a couple years working on this project from the early design stages through construction, and as a result, I’ve investigated this project from all angles, inside and out, in both two and three dimensions. However, in all cases the building was represented as a static object in a primarily digital environment. Even though our office embraces building information modeling (BIM) software in our design process which enables us to enhance the lines of communication between architect, contractor, and owner; all our efforts to explain our craft to others is void of the life integral to this video.

Am I unique in my reaction? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Left or right brain comments are welcome.

Save the Bay co-founders Kay Kerr (top), Sylvia McLaughlin (left) and Esther Gulick. Courtesy: Save the Bay

Before Earth Day, the term sustainability, or the recognition of global warming, three women challenged the “nature as nuisance” mentality that permeated human development since the industrial revolution and, perhaps unknowingly, gave rise to the conservation movement that changed the lives of all Americans.

Kay Kerr, Sylvia McLaughlin and Esther Gulick formed the Save San Francisco Bay Association 50 years ago (now saveSFbay.org), to stop the unregulated dumping of garbage around the perimeter of San Francisco Bay to create developable land for the rapidly growing region. Their individual efforts did, in fact, save the bay, and led to the creation of the first coastal protection agency in the US and was the catalyst for countless grassroots conservation movements.

As we enjoy the groundbreaking ceremony for the Bullitt Foundation project, I’ll be reflecting on the many people that have contributed to this proud moment, and dreaming of our world in another 50 years.

Grasshopper is a software tool that utilizes Rhino 3-D as a modeling platform to develop parametrically controlled models with real time geometric manipulation. While the use of Rhino and Grasshopper is not atypical in the architectural community, particularly in academia and with regard to complex form generation, we have been investigating its viability for comparative analysis in sustainable and structural design.

As a parametric tool, grasshopper is numerically or formula driven. As a result, you are not only able to generate form with numbers, but you can distill out numerical data from the form you have created. Fascinated with this ability to quantify various aspects of our design, I have started to develop a basic Grasshopper toolbox for the firm. In addition to this “accounting” of the design, Rhino’s excellent file type compatibility allows easy export of the generated geometry to a wide range of other software platforms for further evaluation. Based on these two attributes of the Grasshopper/Rhino platform – numerical analysis and wide compatibility — we are succeeding in a more informed design process with regard to building performance and developing a few really exciting tools.

The idea is data-in = data-out. With a parametric design you know, in detail, the parameters through which your model was created and can selectively track the values of these parameters. At Miller Hull, this notion of selective tracking has been used to generate tools related to Photovoltaic analysis, iterative structural design and efficiency studies, and modular facade layouts accounting for system architecture and percent openness. As a first test case for Grasshopper’s usefulness in our design process, we built a tool to evaluate photovoltaic arrays. This tool was not designed as a replacement process for a detailed energy model or a process that will provide an exact PV output value for a given building, it does however, provide rough orders of magnitude for energy production and an excellent comparative analysis for design decisions relative to solar energy production. It’s dynamic nature allows us to modify the design to account for any building design at any orientation and at any latitude. This tool was first implemented on the design of the Bullitt Center, in Seattle, Washington.

The Bullitt Center is a project on a very challenging site with regard to solar exposure, and the goal is to achieve net-zero energy use. This goal required solar orientation and solar access to be at the forefront of the design from the beginning. Achieving net-zero energy starts with conservation, so our challenge was not to simply build the biggest solar array possible, but to capitalize only on the excess solar energy hitting our building. It was just as important to know what daylight was getting through as it was to know what was being captured for energy generation.

In this project, Grasshopper enabled us to be relentless in our testing and tracking of solar energy throughout the design. We designed a solar canopy and could manipulate it on the fly while maintaining a relative and quantitative understanding of any changes. Simultaneously, a schematic design for the building massing and fenestration was in progress within Sketch-up, and through a quick import process we could overlay the Grasshopper generated solar array onto the evolving building design, allowing the two to evolve together. We were also importing the combined geometry (building and solar array) into Ecotect to manage and assess the day lighting. With this triad of tools — Sketch-up as a base model, iterative solar arrays in Grasshopper/Rhino-3D and Ecotect day lighting analysis — we had a quantitative feedback loop that would update close enough to real time that we knew almost immediately, on a very nuanced level, how design changes were impacting energy goals on the building.

Once the tool was built, evaluation was simple and we quickly pulled together a matrix of options for each facade of the building. Through simple numerical data manipulation each array was adjustable and able to mathematically account for panel manufacturer or efficiency, panel and array tilt, panel quantity and array configuration. All this analysis was possible while maintaining a direct relationship to the evolving building design.

No, I was the spreadsheet girl; I spent my long nights in studio formulating spreadsheets that would formulate into diagrams (a hint of normal architectural thesis protocol). The complication of these diagrams lived in presenting the amounts and effects of an invisible substance — carbon dioxide.

My thesis, titled “Constructing a Carbon Conscience (CCC)” a research-based architectural thesis at Washington State University, didn’t go without controversy. CCC may not have fit so nicely in the definition of an architectural thesis project, but investigating the embodied carbon of buildings is a very important aspect of green building and a source of pollution that has not had the attention it deserves.

Embodied carbon is the CO2 emissions produced by the extraction, manufacturing, and transportation of building materials and the actual process of constructing a structure. These various pollution sources can be affected by architects, leaving us responsible for going beyond any LEED standards and designing sustainably from the first point of extraction.

To understand the complexity of determining the embodied carbon, I developed my own carbon calculator for concrete only (that spreadsheet consumed an entire summer internship). I chose Cascadia Community College’s Center for Global Learning and the Arts building as my subject of investigation. The process alone was full of lessons learned but here are a few nerdy facts for your enjoyment:

• The average pump truck burns through six gallons of diesel per hour of pumping. If one gallon of diesel emits 22.2 lbs of CO2, then that is 133.2 lbs of CO2 for just one hour of pumping.
• Much of our cement is coming from overseas due to environmental roadblocks here in the US making the construction of new plants difficult.
• How local, is local? When considering LEED’s 500 mile radius, you can take a heavy duty truck that gets six miles per gallon traveling to that LEED radius at a constant speed on a flat road and it would emit roughly 1,850 lbs of CO2.

So once grad school and my summer of concrete was over, I presented my thesis at Miller Hull and though my presentation was geared towards contractors (an audience that I felt would be the biggest challenge to convince that embodied carbon is a problem) there was an understanding from the firm that it takes a team of people with varying skills to make a great design team and I was offered an internship! My thesis clicked with Miller Hull’s principle that all buildings should be sustainable, and sustainability should start with the most basic building components. Miller Hull is now looking to go beyond what typical metrics define sustainability, and embodied carbon will become a factor in determining environmentally responsible buildings. There are a lot of tools that need to be created before we can realistically include embodied carbon in our green building rubric, but with industry, clients, contractors, and consultant cooperation, we will eventually up the ante of what is sustainable design.

I came to work at Miller Hull because of the way the firm was able to weave the rigor of a modern design aesthetic with a strong environmental ethic. This joint focus on design and sustainability defines the culture here and is one of our greatest strengths. To keep that culture sharp, we are always looking for ways to ‘stir the pot’ and see what new ideas and new ways of thinking come to surface. Design competitions are a great way to get this dialogue started and also to ensure that everyone in the firm has an opportunity to contribute. We took on two competitions earlier this year, both based in varying degrees on the Living Building Challenge (LBC), the most aggressive measure of sustainable buildings today.

‘Zero District’ was the title of our entry for the Metropolis Magazine/GSA co-sponsored NextGen competition (all participants had to have less than 10 years experience). The competition brief asked teams to take an existing million square foot federal office building in Los Angeles to a zero environmental footprint. Our proposal stood out from the other competition entries in the end because it went beyond the property lines and sought out other buildings which offered symbiotic opportunities to reduce energy and resource demands. Our breakthrough was that it is not only easier to achieve net-zero when you have a diversity of building types to work with, but by increasing the sheer number of buildings involved, we will simply affect greater change.

With an entry for the Living City Competition called ‘Fight for your Right of Way’ we were able to step back even further and try to imagine how the city of the future would operate and what it would look like. Here, going beyond the property lines was a given, and we quickly came to focus specifically on the public right-of-way (ROW), which represents as much as 40% of the land in the typical gridiron city. The two big challenges facing cities are one, how to operate more efficiently, and two, how to accommodate increased density.

To become more efficient, we took the stand that our centralized water, waste and power networks need to become more localized. America is facing a serious financial crisis right now figuring out to maintain the extensive, sprawling infrastructure we have built. If we can handle all of water, waste and energy needs on site, we won’t be held hostage to this infrastructure. To handle increased density we believe that cities are going to have to provide increased access to nature, especially if families are going to move back into the cities. To solve both we proposed that the city could convert 25% of its existing ROW from autocentric uses to natural greenways that simultaneously handle our water needs and provide access to nature. The ROW no longer has to exist solely for the conveyance of utilities, people and goods, it can actually serve as the utility — generating our power, treating our water and composting our waste.

The common theme that emerged from the two competitions was that the next step in urban sustainability, and the LBC in particular, is to fundamentally shift our perception of what is possible within the public ROW. It turns out that one of the projects in the office being design to meet the LBC is actually beginning to affect this change. The Bullitt Center is looking to both generate renewable energy and infiltrate treated grey water in the ROW. Both are currently not allowed and a significant amount of time and energy has been devoted to working with agencies to change these laws. Fortunately we live in one of the most progressive cities on environmental issues. The Seattle City Council recently adopted the Living Building Pilot Program, which directs city agencies to look at existing codes through the lens of the LBC and see how the intent of the codes can be kept but unnecessary obstacles removed.

Our work on the competitions allowed us to step back and think big. We were able to take some of the current thinking in the office and explore it beyond the confines of real project. We were able to work through some of the major issues confronting society and come up with a vision of the future that is both believable and inspiring. There is a genuine commitment and a confidence in our office that we can design buildings that carry their own weight and no longer degrade their environments and burden future generations. Our focus on good design and sustainability gives us an opportunity to make key contributions to a better future.

The government is well positioned to be a leader in establishing new energy standards. GSA has a unique opportunity to demonstrate to everyone that the resultant sustainable products and methodologies can work on both a large and small scale. The benefit comes in new products, made affordable by new technology use and development — proven in GSA projects to stand out as examples for everyone.

When asked about how ZEF could be achieved, Ms. Johnson explained that her current approach was to support and foster creative thinking by allowing her projects to take risks and experiment. A successful first step towards ZEF is to manage waste. Ultimately, we hope to eliminate waste and actually create renewable energy and resources for each project on a project site.

President Obama is already on board. Executive Order #13514 for Federal Leadership in Environmental Energy and Economic Performance for all projects completed in 2020 and beyond dictates that all new government projects must be Net Zero (the buildings, on a net annualized basis, must provide as much power as they consume) by the year 2030.

As we met as a design team with the GSA ownership team in January 2010 for our San Ysidro Land Port of Entry project, we had an opportunity to speak about both individual and project goals. In addition to the operational and programmatic requirements, and achieving a project which met the GSA budget, one of the unanimous goals for the SYLPOE project was to be a leader in sustainable design. This became a touchstone for every decision as we moved through a very rapid concept design phase of work for the project as a whole and into the contract documents work for Phase 1B, the first construction phase currently under way in San Ysidro. Ultimately, SYLPOE could achieve the net zero milestone at the end of the Phase 3 construction, currently scheduled for completion in 2016, 14 years ahead of the environmental goals established by EO #13514.

Our team’s approach to the port’s design stretched the way that the GSA conceives of Land Port of Entry projects. We asked them to think about larger concepts, to take risks. But by integrating sustainable elements such as solar shading, photo voltaics and solar thermal arrays, geothermal exchange, and water conservation strategies such as a membrane bio-reactor and a below-grade cistern for rainwater collection into the project from day one, we mitigated those risks. Early input by consultants and early buy-in by the ownership group ensured that these elements occurred within the project boundaries and within the overall project budget.