Page 14 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

xii FOREWORD

Which brings me to why I am so enthusiastic about this book. It is an important
resource for anyone who wants to leapfrog years of experiential learning and get right
to the heart of effective design process management for green building design. To date
very few publications and resources have been focused on the design process and yet
in many regards good process management is always the foundation for sustained and
successful innovation.
To help get you in the mindset for this process-rich publication, here are my Ten
Commandments of Cost-Effective Green Building Design:

1 Commitment. The earlier the commitment is made, the better for everyone. This
should be a formal, continuously improved, widely known, and detailed green
building commitment for all building projects, integrated into capital project
approval processes and related contracts.
2 Leadership. To minimize the risk of business as usual, the client and/or project
manager must take an active and ongoing leadership role throughout the project,
establishing project-specific environmental performance requirements in pre-
design (LEED is ideal for this), challenging, scrutinizing, and pushing the design
team at every stage. The client and/or project manager should understand enough
about LEED, integrated design, energy modeling, and life-cycle costing to ask the
right questions at the right time, a subject this book goes into at length.
3 Accountability. To avoid lost opportunities and unnecessary costs, establish all
roles and responsibilities, sequencing and tracking requirements for every envi-
ronmental performance goal. LEED is ideal for this purpose. Use the LEED score-
card to empower the client to participate actively in holding the project team
accountable. Utilize LEED’s third-party verification process to keep the design
team on track with documentation. Work to streamline LEED documentation pro-
cedures by paying attention to (and learning from) every project.
4 Process Management. The failure to properly manage tasks at each stage in the
design process results in a wide range of missed opportunities and avoidable costs.
Each green building performance goal requires a set of tasks to be identified,
understood, allocated across the team, sequenced and integrated properly into the
design team process. At every stage in the design process, from predesign through
to construction and occupancy, there are stage-specific activities that must be com-
pleted to maximize innovation and minimize added costs.
For example, many design teams don’t include the building operators, or they
fail to get any real value from the energy modeling process (because it is done too
late to inform the design) or they fail to incorporate a life-cycle costing approach
because cost estimations are either done too late and/or fail to include operating
costs in the cost model.
5 Integrated Design. Effective integrated design can produce significant design
innovations and cost savings. The client and project manager must commit to inte-
grated design and apply constant pressure on the project team to comply.
Commitment to the process must be included in all contracts, the selection process
and any ongoing team performance evaluation and quality assurance processes.