Campus Green Builder

Mr. Tony Schmidt, the project architect from the architecture firm retained for the Richland College’s Sabine Hall project, Perkins & Will, as well as Mr. Eddy Hueston, the Director of Facilities Management at the Richland College offered suggestions that could help other institutions, which are planning to build new buildings or retrofit the old infrastructure on their campuses and are interested in pursuing the green design and construction route for these capital projects.

Participation in the conferences and workshops that educate about the logistics of green construction is one crucial resource that Mr. Hueston found to be enormously informative and helpful. By attending Greenbuild and exploring the resources available on the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) website, Mr. Hueston and others were able to acquire green building knowledge that was taken back to the institution and informed the planning of this project. This understanding also greatly benefited the administration, since it helped eliminate the myths about green building costing more and not being worth the effort. Though it is true that there is an added upfront cost to building green, the team realized that the benefits and the cost savings over the lifetime of the building outweigh the initial expense.

In addition to their own research, the project team at the Richland College also took the initiative to search other institutions that were building green on their campuses. The institution met with those peers and visited their campuses. During this networking period, they were able to ask questions about the involved processes and discuss payback and strategies with the administration and facilities staff of those peer institutions.

Mr. Schmidt, the project architect, also noted that deciding on building green and adherence to a specific rating system prior to the commencement of a project is essential to the success of the design and construction in the given budget: “…making the commitment at the beginning of the project allows the design team to provide the client with a sustainable building at no additional cost. We’re showing two buildings in our Dallas office that are achieving LEED^® Platinum and have not exceeded the original project budget, have not reduced scope in order to do that. I think the early commitment is key to getting a much more responsible building, one that you receive immediate payback in utility cost and functionality of the building and you’re not paying any premium for that.”¹

Mr. Schmidt further noted that the owners should demand high performance buildings from their design professionals and contractors, rather than becoming inactive participants in the process, leaving all the critical decision-making to the hired consultants. Mr. Schmidt acknowledged that many of the features that Richland College requested were not typical of high efficiency buildings. Richland showed the commitment and understanding towards sustainability, which has not only made the institution a leader in the higher education sector, but also helped the infrastructure become significantly more energy-efficient with momentous savings in energy related expenses.

Finally, when asked about recommendations regarding how to generate momentum within the institution in support of campus green building practice, Mr. Hueston concluded: “…I don’t have a real firm formula for that but I can say it this way, and I can say this with very much a clear conscious and with some degree of experience, if top administration does not have a strong commitment to this, it’s going to be hard to make it happen. If the faculty, for example, is behind this, but top administration (vice president and president) do not feel very strongly about it, it will be really hard to make it work. To me, the success that we’ve had, comes from the fact that our president not just acted on this idea of building green but he literally led us all the way through.”²

¹ and ² Hueston, E. and Schmidt, T. Telephone Interviews. July 1, 2009 and July 14, 2009.