Page 264 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

240 CONSTRUCTION AND OPERATIONS

10 Do special inspection programs (such as commissioning) include ongoing review
of critical functional elements?
11 If this is a school or college project, have we trained the teachers or instructors to
explain and use the sustainability systems of this project?
12 Have we explained the benefits of the sustainable design features in this project to
higher-level decision makers, to get their support for sustainable operations?
13 Have we incorporated LEED-EB requirements such as environmentally preferable
purchasing, transportation demand management, and enhanced waste manage-
ment policies, into our ongoing building operating plans?

LEED for Existing Buildings Operations and Maintenance (LEED-EB) is the system
for benchmarking, assessing, and certifying on-going operations. Consideration of the
role of LEED-EB in operating and maintaining high-performance buildings is beyond
the scope of this book. However, it’s worth noting that the world’s largest property man-
agement company, CB Richard Ellis (CBRE), has made a major commitment to the
LEED-EB certification process. Sally Wilson is senior vice president and global direc-
tor of environmental strategy at CBRE. Here’s her approach to LEED-EB.*

We made a commitment with the U.S. Green Building Council in November [of
2007] to register 100 of our buildings in the LEED-EB portfolio program. Right now
we’re going through the process of selecting and registering the buildings, and we’re
probably going to have closer to 150 buildings. We will have significant number of
them certified by the end of 2008.
On the other hand, we still have continued to develop our “Sensible Sustainability”
solutions within our asset services division that deals with energy use, water use,
waste management and expanded recycling programs for light bulbs, batteries and
printer cartridges. We’re really trying to extend it and make the recycling programs
better. One of the big components that we’re going to work in this year, now that we
have the infrastructure in the buildings, is communicating with the tenants to help
them understand how they can change their behavior to act more responsibly and uti-
lize the programs that we set up. It really doesn’t matter how energy efficient we’ve
made the building or whether we have these waste programs in place. It’s the tenants
in the buildings that create the use primarily. We have to communicate to them so they
can take advantage of what we’ve done and ultimately make the reduction through
their actions.

One of the key elements in operating a building for the health and productivity of
the occupants is a green cleaning program. For Wilson, green cleaning is an important
part of the CBRE program.

On the cleaning side, we put solutions in place to ensure that the janitorial services
are turning lights and equipment off at night. The other thing with janitorial services

*Interview with Sally Wilson, CBRE, February 2008.