DPR Continues to lead the industry in high-performance green building, helping customers choose the right path for their projects

Having walked in the customer’s shoes by building its own Silver LEED®-certified office building, DPR understands firsthand the business side to building green. With an eye on the bottom-line, DPR’s seasoned green teams across the country provide customers with the information they need to make informed decisions, weighing first costs against total life-cycle savings.

With the highest percentage of LEED-trained professionals of any contractor in the country, a cadre of green “gurus” and green teams in every regional office, and a growing portfolio of successful sustainable projects under its belt or in the works, it’s no secret that DPR is strongly committed to green building. From an insider’s standpoint, the benefits of green design and construction are obvious, and extend well beyond simply the long-term operational cost savings realized in such facilities. The payoff for owners includes increased employee productivity and improved employee health and retention, among other things—a “triple bottom-line benefit” that DPR professionals espouse when working to educate owners about what green can do for them.

The challenge in selling green projects to sometimes skeptical owners and in bridging the gap with designers or subcontractors unfamiliar with green building’s benefits often boils down to satisfactorily answering the bottom-line question: what is it going to cost, and why pay more upfront? Throughout all of its 10 regional offices, DPR is increasingly tackling that question as it works to demonstrate the advantages green building can offer its customers. At the same time, DPR is making strides internally with an eye on its 2010 goal of having a proven track record of being environmentally responsible in the way DPR does business.

While cost is often the major consideration for owners considering incorporating sustainable design and construction on their projects, many variables come into play in determining what the upfront premium will be for pursuing the different levels of LEED certification on a given project. Among them: whether or not the project is located in an urban setting, where LEED points are easily attained simply by proximity to mass transit systems; the experience and familiarity of the architect and contractor in sustainable design and construction practices; and perhaps most importantly, how early the architect and contractor are involved in the planning and preconstruction process for a project pursuing LEED certification.

“The earlier the design and construction team is involved in a green building project, the more money that can be saved on the back end in terms of water, energy and maintenance costs, savings that will go back to the owner if done correctly,” says Chris Gorthy, one of DPR’s green “gurus” who works out of the Fairfax, VA office. “When a contractor gets involved late in a project during value engineering, they may not understand why certain green building items were chosen, such as a green roof for example, and may advise the owner that they can save “x” amount of dollars by substituting it with a typical roofing system. That happens all the time, where someone only looks at the savings on one side of the equation. A contractor who is brought on early and understands green concepts knows that while a green roof is initially more expensive than a traditional system, it also can provide substantial benefits by decreasing the mechanical- and electrical-loading requirements, which reduces energy costs and the life-cycle costs of the facility in addition to reducing the size and cost of the storm-water management system.”

In the Austin office, DPR has completed or is currently building several new financial centers for client Wachovia Bank. One that is now in preconstruction is Escarpment Village, a flagship project designed by AGUIRREcorporation that is targeting LEED Gold certification. In this case Stratus Properties, the landlord/owner of the property on which the facility is being built, has imposed a set of restrictive covenants on all potential developers seeking to build on the environmentally sensitive site, which is located atop the recharge zone for a local aquifer. Those requirements mirrored many set forth in the LEED certification system. Consequently, with DPR’s guidance Wachovia made the decision to make this facility its first to pursue LEED Gold certification in the state of Texas.

The hands-on experience that Wachovia has had incorporating sustainable design on the upcoming Escarpment Village project has impacted the company’s vision for its future facilities as well. It has subsequently asked DPR to participate in the redesign of its flagship bank facility template to incorporate green building in all future projects, estimated to number around 50 a year over the next three years as Wachovia expands in Texas and beyond.

“This project opened their eyes to the benefit of what can and should be done,” said DPR Project Engineer James Davis, who is involved in the Wachovia work and in DPR’s green building efforts in the region. “They decided as a corporation that this makes sense economically, from a risk management standpoint and from a future real estate standpoint. And they have us on board as a contractor who can give them cost benefit analysis and information on what will be their return on investment over the next 20 years.”

He added, “We not only have the technological expertise but also the constructibility, schedule and materials knowledge with respect to green building.”

For this project and others pursuing green certification, DPR employs Ecologic3, a special online software tool developed by a green consultant to help DPR project managers and estimators work through the LEED rating system, track costs and provide tangible data for owners that allows them to see the savings and benefits. “They can literally take it to the bank for funding purposes,” said Davis.

The Escarpment Village project has impacted DPR’s own internal waste recycling efforts in the Austin region as well. The office has begun utilizing the waste recycling company contracted for the Escarpment Village project on all DPR Austin jobsites; as a result, the region is now diverting more than 80 percent of the waste from its projects away from the landfill, according to Davis. That effort is in line with a host of other efforts underway in each of DPR’s regional offices to reduce waste and promote green practices, including the use of tools such as On-Screen Takeoff during preconstruction to help reduce the use of drawing paper and creating training programs to help further educate DPR teams, owners and subcontractors on the current best practices in green building. All of these efforts demonstrate the company’s long-term commitment to environmental responsibility and continued leadership in the green arena.