Hi, we're here with Michelle Reott from Earthly Ideas. She's the principle there. She's a LEED accredited professional who works with design teams on big building projects, and she's going to be talking to us about design sustainable building, and certification, thanks for being here. >> Thanks. >> Michelle, in this conversation we're going to talk about lead certified buildings. And it took me the longest time to figure out what lead meant, and so, to avoid that with our students, could you explain that? >> Sure. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and it's a green building rating system. It's utilized by design teams as a guideline, or a tool to help them compare their building to others in terms of green building strategies. Everything from sustainable sites, materials and resources, water efficiency, energy. And indoor environmental quality. So, I've been focused on green building consulting since 1995, solely since 1995, and LEED is one of the tools that teams use to work on green building. >> And it's mandated for some government buildings, is that right? >> Yes, in the state of Colorado for instance, the high performance certification program that comes out of the office of the state architect requires LEED, or another third party certified green building rating system to gauge if a project actually has met its targets for a green building. >> That's great. Thank you. Something you said in a lecture years ago has stuck with me, and I've repeated it probably paraphrased it incorrectly. But it was during the design phase, which is only a few percent of a budget of a building. 85, or 90% of the lifetime cost of the building are determined. Could you talk about that a little bit? I mean, I find it insightful and little shocking. >> Well, it comes from a book called, Lean and Clean Management that was written by Joseph Romm, and he was Acting Assistant Secretary to the US DOE in the 90s. And the quote is that when, well, it goes on to say, I guess, that when 7% of the upfront costs have been spent, that 85% of the building's life cycle has been set by that. And I guess, just to borrow from another quote, that means, that all the really important mistakes are made on the first day. >> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] The decisions that are made by a team, early on set the life cycle of the building's energy costs. For instance, where the building's located, how it's oriented, kind of sets the design team on a path. And ties their hands, so that they don't really have the opportunity to make changes, and it sets the energy course for the building. I like, to think about if you can elongate the east-west access of a building, and have good solar orientation, have good daylighting opportunities, you're working with the climate instead of against it. So, you just have such a great opportunity it's almost overwhelming when you're designing from scratch, to think about what you can do. And, you have so many opportunities at the beginning, and they're the most cost-effective to implement then. As the design goes on, the team is, things are becoming more succinct and more tight in the design. But the opportunities become less and it becomes more expensive to go back and say, well, what if we had done this? So, I think, we just have so many opportunities when we design that we can often forget those important things that happen in the very beginning, and how they set the course for the project. >> Now, we've talked about energy savings in terms of design. But there are some other aspects that you and I have talked about on occasion, about healthy buildings, and all sort of worker attitudes, and what I suppose, there's a material choices all those things get locked into, is that right? >> Yeah, as the design goes on, they're making choices about everything from what carpeting is going to be used to what kind of blocks on the exterior of the building. So, those choices are all there. I like to think of sustainable design as the design construction and operation practices that support, and improve the systems that sustain life. So, you're thinking about resources. Human resource, how do you use that efficiently, how do you use those material resource efficiently. Or energy resources, or water for that matter, as well. >> So, you've already mentioned a couple design features, but are there other ways that thoughtful design can reduce environmental impact of a building? >> Well, where the building's located amazingly impacts the environment in a lot of ways. If you're building in an existing area that's already developed, there's utility, there's street, there's things that you can use that help benefit the community, because they don't have to build those new. It also allows undeveloped areas to stay kind of wild and green instead of being built on, and it also affects how people get to and from the building. Can they use public transportation, or walk to the building, or do they have to drive. And then how do the people who ultimately live, or work in that building utilize the community amenities around them. So, those issues kind of related to the community and where the building is located are some big decisions remain. >> So, not just environmental impact also has to do with employees lifestyle and all kinds of stuff. Other ways that thoughtful design affect the company employees productivity and so on. >> Well, there is a lot of different benefits, I think, the existing infrastructure example that I used that can really save money in the beginning, those upfront capital costs, because if you get to use existing infrastructure instead of having to build at all. Or tap into that existing infrastructure, that's less expensive. In the long term, with energy costs and water costs, those utility bills come in every month. And if you get those reduced through green design, those are going to save you in the long run. Some jurisdictions have streamline approvals, or other incentives for green building. In fact, I was at a ConPlan meeting here in Durango just. Last week, and their looking at giving density, intensity, and height bonuses if you use green construction practices. So, it's a policy that they're looking to implement. >> So, maybe you better explain that a little bit. So, if you use green building policies, you can get a variance against density rules, or maybe you better explain. >> Yeah, that was it. If you use green building practices. This new policy is going to allow you to get, have more density, or have a higher building, because you've used these green practices. Or it's the same thing they're using for affordable housing. if you're doing affordable housing, they're going to give you some benefits, or incentives to do it. And that's one of the policies that the complains looking at. >> So, presume, I believe, then if you can build with more density there's more profit margin to be made, or something like that. And so, it becomes really attractive maybe to install a certain attributes in order to have those benefits then. >> Exactly. >> That's clever. >> And then I was looking at some policies just earlier today, and some jurisdictions offer tax benefits, or other monetary policies for building green. I also think, there's some marketing benefits that people may want to capitalize if they are building a new building, and recruiting employees, they can tap the green benefits of working. Or top of benefits of working in a green building. If the developer is building a spec building, they can look at capitalizing on the marketing benefits and differentiate their building from other buildings in the area. And then if a building is looking for occupants whether they are residents, or tenants in the building. The green building feature could help them lease the building faster, or sell the building faster. I guess, the last thing I wanted to talk about benefit wise was health and safety benefit, which is unfortunately are harder to quantify, but they're, definitely they're. And the most valuable resource that we have is the human resource. And so, I can share a little bit more about that. But, I guess, there's enhanced occupant comfort they can increase productivity in green buildings. And when we came out of the 70s energy crisis, and went to the 80s, and 90s we went into this sealed boxes. And we were thinking more about energy, and not about the occupants in them, and there were a lot of sick buildings problems that came from that. So, now, we can reduce the liability risk that comes from building by building green, and thinking about indoor air quality and that human occupant. >> In fact, I think, I remember, Business Week cover article that said, is your building killing you, or killing your employees or something like that. I mean, it was pretty stark. I want to go and pursue this a little bit further. We talk about replacing light bulbs, and we're going to save 72 watts to 20 watts, sounds like we're going to save 52 watts an hour. If we have a sick employee, or isn't as productive as possible, that's a lot of light bulbs maybe. [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] Well, early in my career, I began appealing to clients about how energy, and water bills are dwarfed by the dollar per square foot basis of their office workers salaries. I knew, that I couldn't approach clients, and talk about the green benefits and the tree hugging benefits that came along with it. >> [LAUGH] >> So, I had to show them some resource that was related to that. And there was a Rocky Mountain Institute publication called, Greening the Building and the Bottom Line. And they had a chart that shows that it is like a $130 per square feet for office worker salary compared to $2 per square feet for energy cost. That's 72 times what the salary workers are worth on dollar per square feet. So, anything that the owner can do to increase the productivity of that, valuable worker is going to pay them back. Even a 1% gain in productivity could dwarf an entire year's worth of energy bills. >> So, when you talk about sick buildings, you're talking about a lot of money going out the door if people aren't coming to work, because of absenteeism, because of illness, because of moral issues, or whatever. >> Exactly. >> That's enormous. That's enormous. Certainly what I have heard you talked in the past, you've always had this tension between the extra costs of making the investment today versus the savings. Has that changed, or are we still on that thing about, well, this green stuff can cost money, so I'm not going to do it, I'm going to build a bigger shell I can, as cheaply as I can, and we'll let the chips followed in me. >> Unfortunately there is still a disconnect between making that upfront investment that's going to save in the long term, it's hard to show the value sometimes. Especially, if we're looking at the productivity gains. That's much harder to quantify. People can understand the energy impact, but still sometimes there's the disconnect between what my capital budget is, and what my operating budget is, even within the same organization, two different people control those budgets and how they work together, or not. Is still kind of a problem that we're trying to overcome. I still like to go back to that chart, and talk about the disparity between what they're paying for their workers, and their energy to try to appeal to them on a dollars per cents basis. >> And it really comes down, we just don't understand life cycle thinking very well apparently. because if you looked at the life cycle, you'd pretty quickly say, yeah, makes perfect sense to figure out how to finance this invest, because I going to get the money back sometime, but- >> If they can find the financing, I mean, that's part of the problem too is having the ability to find that financing. I mean, some people are ready like a school district, or something that has a bond that has a find the amount of money that they've already borrowed they want make that investment. But there are so many things that they have to use that money for, it's hard to balance it sometimes. >> Now, you would think that the geniuses at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers, that nearly crashed our economy a few years ago, could create a vehicle to do this, would you? >> I would think so. >> [LAUGH] >> I would hope so. [LAUGH] But with something creative. >> Yeah, yeah, if they could get 10%. And in fact, we do, we have energy savings contracts, and some things like that, but they haven't been brought in to the construction phase, it's usually some sort of a remodeling, retrofit. >> Right, something for an owner to use after the fact. Which then, it's a lot more expensive to try to fix it, instead of it it had been done from the beginning, so. >> That leads to, I think, a really interesting topic. because you work with a lot of renovations, and, I know, that building from the ground up is wonderful, and you have 100% flexibility. But in fact, you've told me that the amount of embedded energy and materials in existing buildings, we just can't afford to bulldoze them and start over, it's just not practical, and so, can you talk a little bit about the comparison of renovating existing buildings versus new? >> Yeah, there is a great image from the National Trust for Historic Preservation that they used in the 80s, I think, it was coming out of the gas- >> We're trying to put that on screen- >> Okay, good, good, because it, I think, it must have come out of the lines for gas that we had to wait in the 70s. And they were talking about saving energy by saving those buildings, because the embodied energy, that's contained in those existing buildings is an incredible resource. And then preservation Idaho went on and said, the greenest building is the one that's already been built. And that sentiment really resonates with me. My favorite projects are renovations, because they really require the owner to step back, and be creative, and think about how can we make this existing building work. One of the projects I worked on, first projects back in 1995 was for a paper recycling company and we turned a lumber mill into their paper recycling facility. >> How ironic [LAUGH]. >> [LAUGH] But, we had to think differently than if we had just a clean slate to go from, so the embodied energy of all the human labor that went into build the building. As well as all the resources in there, if we bulldozed that building, we lose those resources and we just lose the embodied energy, and we just waste those resources. So, there's just too many existing buildings that we just need to think more strongly about using them in better ways. >> That's a great example, a lumber mill to paper recycling. There's probably some bad karma that's slowly getting washed out of there as we recycle paper? [LAUGH] >> That's true, that's true. >> Thank you for all the work you do in the community, and the time you've taken to spend a session with us. >> Thanks, great to be here.
