Federal Facilities' Green Efforts Require Collaboration

On February 22nd-24th, I attended a Military Construction Summit in Vienna, VA and there were a wide range of topics covered. This well-attended summit was focused on US Military Construction efforts for all branches of the Department of Defense. One session was headed up by Melissa Gallagher-Rogers Director, Government Sector of the US Green Building Council and she went over a pretty standard LEED and USGBC presentation. The questions by the audience were focused around the standard “how do you justify costs to do green?” or “what are the costs to get a building LEED certified”? As she was talking I realized that this idea of collaboration between owner, designer, constructor, end user, subcontractors, etc. to come up with the most green and sustainable solution will not really work with a restrictive and divided contracting method like design-bid-build.

So I raised my hand and asked Melissa, “Based on the fact that sustainable building approaches – both for new and existing buildings – require tons of communications, collaboration, sharing and flexibility, what is the USGBC preferred method of contracting on federal and public funded facilities?” After a few minutes of back and forth clarification questions the response was “we have not really looked at that point, and I can’t answer it.” So I raised the fact that construction contracting methods of design-build on new buildings and Job Order Contracting on existing buildings really favors the tenets, approaches and processes of LEED.

I challenged the group to understand that for the end product to be the best, greenest, and most sustainable solution there needs to be open, two-way collaboration. Make sure your contracting method allows for this. To apply pre-World War II contracting methods to 21st Century demands might not make sense. In the end, green efforts require relationships that are structured as open, win-win-win focused.