Page 385 - The Engineering Guide to LEED-New Construction Sustainable Construction for Engineers

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This includes establishing policy and program management for MILCON. However,
the actual coordination and management of MILCON projects are the responsibility of
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). The Army is the largest federal facility
2
owner of all agencies with over 160,000 buildings occupying 1.1 billion ft of floor
space. This is nearly one-third of all federal buildings and one-half of those owned by
the DoD. The USACE also manages an equivalent percentage of the MILCON budget
each year. Following the signing of EO 13123, the Office of the Deputy Assistant
Secretary of the Army for Installations and Housing (DASA-I&H) issued a memo in
April of 2000 addressing sustainable design and development. DASA-I&H directed
ACSIM to implement policy and USACE to develop technical guidance for sustainable
construction. In May 2000, ACSIM published the sustainable design and development
(SDD) policy, defining SDD as “the systematic consideration of current and future
impacts of an activity, product or decision on the environment, energy use, natural
resources, the economy and quality of life” and mandating SDD considerations for
Army installations. One year later, USACE developed and released the Sustainable
Project Rating Tool (SPiRiT) and provided technical guidance for implementation in
Technical Letter ETL 1110-3-491, Sustainable Design for Military Facilities. SPiRiT is a
tool similar to and based on LEED, although it incorporates operations and maintenance
issues, allows for flexibility in design for building modifications based on need changes,
and is a self-rating tool that does not require third-party certification as with LEED.
ACSIM issued a policy statement in May 2001 for the implementation of SPiRiT with
the initial requirement of a bronze rating for all new construction projects. Over the
next several years, the sustainable rating requirements were raised to silver and then
to gold, and several version changes were made to further refine SPiRiT. In late 2005,
the USACE’s Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) released the
results of a study comparing SPiRiT rated projects to LEED and recommended that
the Army adopt LEED as the primary rating tool. On January 5, 2006, the Office of the
Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations and the Environment (OASA-I&E)
released a memorandum mandating the change from SPiRiT to LEED effective with
the FY08 MILCON program and establishing LEED silver as the standard. The U.S.
Army has aggressively pursued sustainable construction in the MILCON program
and seems poised to continue raising the standard as LEED grows as the industry
benchmark.
The Army has been progressively establishing 25-year sustainability goals at many
of its facilities. This effort is led out of the Sustainability Division ODEP (Office of
Director of Environmental Programs) in the Pentagon. In response to this initiative, in
2007, a group at Fort Jackson in Columbia, S.C., developed a showcase for “Sustainable
Interiors” as both a way to incorporate sustainability into the purchasing procedure on
post and an educational outlet for the Army and the community. Figure 9.2.1 shows an
educational cutaway in the showcase.

Naval Facilities Engineering Command
For the Department of the Navy, the Commander, Naval Installations Command
(CNIC), owns and manages all the Navy’s installations and facilities thereon. CNIC
relies on Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) for all engineering support,
including the establishment of technical guidance and policy, related to facility
sustainability and execution of the MILCON program. The Department of the Navy,
including the Marine Corps, owns about 30 percent of the DoD’s buildings and has