Inspiration and Connection

Halie Colbourne, Sustainability Associate | BCCI Construction

Fresh off of the Living Standard Town Hall Series, the pre-GreenerBuilder kick-off event hosted at Perkins+Will’s San Francisco’s office, Mahesh Ramanujam, president and CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council, shared the impact of storytelling to engage a broader audience about the importance of reversing climate change. To get a pulse of people’s thinking about environmental issues, the Living Standard team surveyed focus groups across five regions in the U.S. Only 11 percent of people surveyed associated the term ‘green buildings’ strongly with the environment. An overwhelming majority did not understand the correlation of sustainable building with lessening the impact on the environment and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Moreover, many terms used by the sustainability and green building communities were viewed as highly politicized, such as ‘climate change,’ ‘climate movement,’ ‘global warming,’ and ‘climate risk.’ Those surveyed resonated with more favorable terms such as ‘Mother Nature,’ ‘sustainability,’ and ‘green communities.’

During the Greenbuilder Opening Keynote, Paul Hawken asked why 99 percent of the world is disengaged with the climate conversation. He believes that to reverse climate change, we need to address the country’s current health needs, not our existential threat. In fact, 65 percent of survey respondents don’t believe the environment is healthy. Research has shown for some time now that changes in climate have altered people’s health, families, and communities, and when messaging is related to those issues, it’s personal, and people pay attention.

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Advance Sustainable Building: Counting Carbon

Matthew Koester, Sustainability Coordinator | BCCI Construction

The Decarbonization Track featured a rich lineup of panels covering methods of carbon reduction in both organizational operations and cutting-edge projects. The Building Decarbonization Coalition defines decarbonization as removing greenhouse gas emissions from energy use and moving to clean energy sources for building energy. Decarbonization is not just about building energy use, but also involves embodied carbon or the carbon required to manufacture and install construction materials. Embodied carbon often consists of 75 percent of the building’s complete lifecycle of emissions, overshadowing the operational carbon singled out in energy efficiency measures. The international concrete industry is responsible for seven percent of global emissions alone.

BCCI’s Sustainability team is already working on implementing a few of these practices in an effort to reduce and measure carbon outputs:

• Reducing embodied carbon in specs: Early engagement and working with the design partners to specify materials for environmental impact is key to reducing embodied carbon on a project. A recent BCCI tenant improvement project, for a confidential financial firm, approached reducing embodied carbon from spec through install. The results of our teamwork and collaboration showed the reduced embodied carbon impact on specified materials compared to the baseline for concrete, metal, and carpet tile to name a few products. We were also able to use these findings as a pilot pathway for the LEEDv4 Interior Life Cycle Analysis credit.
• Measuring carbon: BCCI plans to incorporate the use of the EC3 (Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator) tool to help clients and design partners to develop less carbon-intensive strategies for materials. By tracking carbon, we can evaluate the environmental impacts of high-carbon materials such as paint, steel, concrete and carpet tile with more accuracy, help our clients meet their internal sustainability goals and, and educate stakeholders about the carbon impact of buildings. In addition, specifying less carbon-intensive materials can sometimes reduce overall material costs.
• Understanding local codes related to natural gas: The City of Berkeley passed a new ordinance banning natural gas lines in new single-family homes. And now there are about 60 cities and towns across California, including San Jose, that are considering building code measures that would promote the use of electric appliances as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the commercial construction market, Adobe just broke ground on a new all-electric office tower in San Jose. BCCI is continuing this conversation with our clients to encourage the use of electric and clean energy for power, especially for new construction.

“If humanity changed the climate by mistake… We can change it with intent.”

Paul Hawken, Environmentalist, Entrepreneur, Author and Activist

Whether taking measurable steps towards improving real estate programs or making small changes in your daily life, we all have a responsibility in the way we interact with our environment. If we shift our perspectives, even just slightly, the impact we can have on the earth is profound. Many incredible thought leaders in the green building community share their stories to inspire others and take action. BCCI will continue to tell our stories to inspire other projects towards innovative, sustainable, and inspiring buildings of the future.

Learn more about the GreenerBuilder Conference here.

The ILFI truly “believes regenerative design can only happen when all voices are brought to the table,” and we are embracing this in our relationships and company. Two initiatives we’re passionate about include:

Make your company JUST

BCCI is committed to ILFI’s JUST label, a social justice program that we obtained in 2014 and recently recertified in 2019. JUST allows companies to publicly disclose, benchmark and optimize their performance in terms of equity and justice. Transparent policies help enhance employee engagement and can lead to improved retention rates and employees’ sense of belonging. JUST 2.0 was launched at the conference, and will be a requirement in the Inclusion imperative of the Living Building Challenge (LBC). BCCI is passionate about engaging with JUST in the marketplace. Learn more about our journey here and check out our ILFI JUST Case Study highlight here.

Accelerating the LBC

While Living Building Challenge (LBC) is becoming an industry standard for high-performing, intentionally designed buildings, there are only a handful of projects in major metropolitan areas. Accelerator programs are filling the gaps to connect policy makers, the AEC industry and ILFI Collaborative members in providing resources for LBC. While robust programs that cover certification costs and provide tools in expertise exist in King County, Washington and Sacramento, California, the Bay Area has yet to catch up. BCCI’s sustainability team is involved in the San Francisco Bay Area Collaborative, which is exploring ways to begin an accelerator program in the region. By providing the initial funding and expertise to begin, we believe that we could drastically increase registered LBC projects in the Bay Area. Through our involvement, we can not only stay ahead of client demand, but also of the green building regulatory atmosphere that is taking cues from the Living Building Challenge. For example, San Francisco’s Mayor London Breed committed the City to four key policy pledges, one of which is net zero energy. We will continue to watch how embodied carbon and deconstruction evolve in the regulatory pipeline.

Our team committed to staying abreast of LBC’s growth in standards and project types. We’re excited to spread the message and inspire our clients and stakeholders. As the Bay Area Collaborative discusses a regional accelerator program, we’ll be here in action and support.

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The International Living Future Institute is part nonprofit, part think-tank and part regenerative design framework. The institute’s most prominent rating system, the Living Building Challenge (LBC), has congruent aspirations to other systems. Like LEED, LBC strives to reduce our impact on the environment by encouraging commissioning and efficient water fixtures. Parallel to WELL, LBC underlines the importance of human health in facilitating healthy lifestyle choices and less toxic material selection.

The ILFI and LBC, however, move past LEED and WELL in beckoning a paradigm shift in how we consider green building. Instead of innovating within established norms, the breakouts, keynotes and networking sessions at Living Future were oriented around building in ecologically and socially restorative ways. The ILFI is interested in how structures can enhance and restore systems in communities, whether it involves water cycles, embodied carbon in materials, urban agriculture or energy storage. The LBC’s framework allows designers, architects, and contractors to step outside of the box.

Additional Resources:

https://trimtab.living-future.org/press-release/lbc4/
https://living-future.org/lbc4/core-basics/

Kena David, BCCI’s Director of Sustainability, began an hour-long seminar by asking participants to write down how they think “well-being” looks, feels and sounds. The goal of this exercise was to understand that the WELL Building Standard was designed to benefit people in the built environment.

On average, humans spend 92% of their lives indoors. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, of all the factors that influence an individual’s health and well-being, the physical environment is the most significant factor. In response to this, the WELL Building Standard allows us to transform the spaces we occupy and everything within them to be more healthful. By applying a holistic approach to health and wellness, the WELL Building Standard addresses seven core concepts that affect human health within the built environment: air, water, nourishment, light, comfort, fitness, and mind.

When a work environment is designed and built to the WELL Building Standard, both employees and employers benefit. The issues and impacts of light specifically stood out   during the seminar. Light levels in the work environment affect the body’s circadian rhythm, which can then impact sleep patterns and ultimately productivity during working hours. One of the optimizations in the light concept is to locate workstations near windows, not only for access to daylight but also so employees can see the outdoors. Natural light and views of nature are both linked to productivity and increased alertness

BCCI is proud to have our San Francisco headquarters WELL v1 Silver certified under New and Existing Interiors, the first project in San Francisco to achieve WELL certification. We are currently targeting WELL certification for the recent build-out of our new South Bay office in Mountain View. Learn more about WELL here.

Kena David, Sustainability Manager | BCCI Construction

The millennial generation is the first generation to grow up with mobile phones and ready access to the Internet. They’ve had the luxury of answers to virtually any question at their fingertips. Their lives have always been digital and connected.

This generation—now the largest in American history—has proved to be the impetus for many changes in the workplace, including the way buildings and offices are designed, operated, and marketed. The influx of millennials into the workplace and their affinity for technology has also shifted the way in which we think about our work environment. The real estate industry has seen a movement toward open office plans that inspire collaboration and offer flexibility and versatility, as well as work spaces that are in closer proximity to public transportation hubs, and an increase in urban-suburban communities. The classic American suburb with a long commute to the office is less appealing to millennials, and the 9-to-5 workday has shifted, with flexible schedules and remote working options becoming the norm.

The worlds of architecture, construction, and real estate have grown and adapted to meet these challenges put forth by millennials. Known for being civic-minded and environmentally conscious, millennials often make work and lifestyle choices that align with their values. For example, the well-known LEED certification established by the US Green Building Council (USGBC) is increasingly a factor when millennials choose a place to live or work. (LEED certification is an indication that a company or building owner is highly attuned to how its physical operations affect the environment.)

Millennial-inspired attention to matters of health in the workplace is reflected in a new certification program dedicated human health and wellness in buildings. The Delos WELL Building Standard has married best practices in the built environment with medical research around what makes people happy, healthy, and productive while spending time indoors. It is the first certification of its kind to holistically integrate specific conditions into architecture, design, and construction to enhance the health and well-being of building occupants. Delos developed this standard to uphold human sustainability and to transform schools, homes, offices, and other indoor facilities into healthy environments.

This post has been adapted from an article originally published for CREW San Francisco’s The VIEW (4th Quarter 2016). Click here to read the full article.

Many Millennials will tell you that there are a number of misconceptions about their generation. Frequently depicted as a technology addicted and entitled group who fear commitment, it might seem that millennials aren’t the hardest working, goal-centric, or disciplined – at least compared to Baby Boomers and Gen Xers.

Members of Commercial Real Estate Women San Francisco (CREW-SF), including Alicia Deschamps, RIM Architects; AJ Jacobsen, CBRE; Erica Levine, ARUP; Verushka Doshi, Haworth; and Kena David, BCCI Construction Company, tackle the topic of millennials in the workforce in the article, “Millennial Mythbusters,” and consider both truths and fallacies of generational stereotypes.

Myth #5: Millennials avoid offices so that they can sit at home and be lazy.

BCCI Sustainability Manager, Kena David and Erica Levine, Energy Consultant at Arup address millennials being labeled as “lazy.” While acknowledging the basis for that idea, they also maintain that it is all wrong! “Many millennial-dominated companies (such as the ever hip start-up’s) allow employees to work outside of the office and standard working hours, reducing the amount of time that employees spend at their desks. This can give off the impression that millennials are lazy slackers who can’t drag themselves out of bed.”

“Flexible working arrangements may actually increase employee effectiveness, allowing more work to get done in the same amount of time. Research indicates that working in an office is actually quite inefficient.”

Kena David, Sustainability Manager, BCCI Construction and Erica Levine, Energy Consultant, Arup

David goes on to note that the ability to work remotely increases productivity due to fewer distractions and interruptions that often occur in an office environment. Basically, having the latitude to work in or out of the office and during hours that are not “the standard,” gives millennials the opportunity to perform at their most optimal.

While evident that millennials are different than the generations that have come before them – whether it comes to goals, tactics, or work style – as the largest population in the workforce, they carry significant influence in the future of work environments as well as work-life balance policies.

Click here to read all the myths.

Kena David, Sustainability Manager | BCCI Construction

Amanda Sturgeon, CEO of the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) and keynote speaker, kicked off the conference with this year’s four-letter word, a word that we should all be mindful of throughout the conference: FAIL. This was shocking, especially for those of us in the sustainability world, revealing to us how we fall short of the goals set forth by ILFI. Her message was that we must acknowledge our shortcomings and not dwell on them in order to focus on how we can change our approach to make a difference in our own lives and within our business. To improve initiatives, we must look at our current state.

Two of the primary values of ILFI are social justice and community. The JUST program was created by ILFI as a transparency platform to help organizations assess their operations, policies, and financial and community investments. At BCCI, our journey with JUST began in 2014, reviewing our existing company policies and financials to benchmark our current state of social justice, equity, and stewardship.

This year’s unConference featured a track with sessions focused on equity, including “Taking Action to Advance Social Equity in the Workplace” in which I spoke about BCCI’s JUST Label. The panel consisted of early adopters of the JUST program who shared what changes they have made since becoming a JUST organization. Our own experience with JUST has resulted in improvements to a number of company policies and procedures.

For BCCI, benchmarking has been the most valuable benefit to pursuing the JUST Label. It gives companies the opportunity to assess current social justice measures, quantify them, and make objective decisions to optimize future efforts. For example, at BCCI we took a second look at our Charitable Giving activities, as that is an area that significantly contributes to our company culture. Through obtaining our JUST Label and analyzing how well we performed in Stewardship, we were able to quantify our current efforts, improve future charitable giving, and align the goals of our Community Builders committee, an internal group committed to supporting the communities in which we work through volunteering and fundraising.

One other area in which we are looking to improve is Safety. As a general contractor, we have an excellent safety record, with an experience modification rating well below industry standard. However, the way in which Safety was measured by JUST, with all industries measured equally, our score was on the lower end of the scale. In our resubmission to renew our JUST Label, the JUST Program Manager realized that the difference between recordable incidents to cases with a job transfer, restriction, or days away from work was significant; and therefore, adjusted our stats for Safety to reflect our 12+ months of no lost time injuries.

Resonating with the unConference’s theme of Authenticity + Action, BCCI is not only interested in documenting our efforts as a JUST organization, but also how we can improve on our policies and future initiatives. In the session I was a part of, both the panelists and the audience shared ideas on how organizations can push to grow and increase their commitments to social justice and equity in the workplace. As BCCI prepares to renew our JUST Label again later this year, we are working to gather and disclose even more information about gender equality to continue to improve equity and diversity. As a JUST organization, BCCI will continually strive for authenticity and transparency to bring and to maintain social equity in our workplace.

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The International Living Future Institute is part nonprofit, part think-tank and part regenerative design framework. The institute’s most prominent rating system, the Living Building Challenge (LBC), has congruent aspirations to other systems. Like LEED, LBC strives to reduce our impact on the environment by encouraging commissioning and efficient water fixtures. Parallel to WELL, LBC underlines the importance of human health in facilitating healthy lifestyle choices and less toxic material selection.

The ILFI and LBC, however, move past LEED and WELL in beckoning a paradigm shift in how we consider green building. Instead of innovating within established norms, the breakouts, keynotes and networking sessions at Living Future were oriented around building in ecologically and socially restorative ways. The ILFI is interested in how structures can enhance and restore systems in communities, whether it involves water cycles, embodied carbon in materials, urban agriculture or energy storage. We spent several days discussing ways in which buildings could be viewed as habitats for humans, and contribute rather than take from local geographies. The LBC’s framework allows designers, architects, and contractors to step outside of the box- striving towards constructing impressive buildings such as these:

Kern Center, Hampshire, NH: 46 acres dedicated to permanent conservation; 1.6 acres for organic farm production

Phipps Center for Sustainable Landscapes, Pittsburgh, PA: Embodied carbon in materials; net zero energy

ARCH | NEXUS, Sacramento, CA: Contribution to public bicycle infrastructure; net zero water

Northern California’s Rising Leaders Committee co-chair shares what inspired her about Greenbuild Chicago

Halie Colbourne, Sustainability Associate | BCCI Construction

USGBC’s international conference and expo, Greenbuild, took place at McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago this November. This year’s theme, “Human x Nature,” was interwoven throughout the conference—in session rooms adorned with biophilic elements, in Amal Clooney’s opening plenary human rights speech and in the Women in Green Luncheon, which focused on workplace policies, cultures, mentorship and leadership.

As co-chair of the USGBC Northern California Rising Leaders Committee, I appreciated the multitude of conversations that viewed these issues through a different set of lenses. Part of our committee’s purpose is to offer a fresh, innovative perspective to the USGBC Northern California community and secure the future of green building by maintaining a pipeline of passionate, competent leaders.

These sentiments were echoed in the Women in Green Power Lunch that I attended. Research studies by McKinsey, Deloitte and others show companies with a higher percentage of women are more profitable. One of the ladies present also suggested that the workforce look to young women for fresh ideas.

The need to change our lens was again reiterated in another session I attended, “LEED and Climate Change.” Although the industry has evolved to look at materials and renovations, it’s time to shift our focus to a broader view—one that encompasses and connects climate change and human rights.

The presenters emphasized, “Metrics matter and they’re not easy.” They referenced the recently published Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and its honest look at the irreparable damage of a warming earth. According to this data, all building emissions need to be reduced 80 to 90 percent by 2050, and new construction must be fossil-free and near net zero energy by 2020. In addition, the rate of energy rehabilitation for existing buildings will need to increase to 5 percent per year in developed countries.

Part of our solution is to share these essential conversations with our clients and colleagues. The “Gaming for a Resilient Future: Net-Zero Energy Campuses” session shared a case study on Long Beach Community College. They noted, “The student population is expecting stewardship.” This reminded me of the importance of the work our Rising Leaders Committee is doing. Our purpose is to bolster the careers of young professionals from a range of disciplines through networking opportunities and hands-on leadership experience. Often, a common language is what’s most important to achieve aggressive sustainability goals such as net zero energy. It’s also crucial to understand that sometimes not building at all is the only way to maintain a building’s carbon footprint.

Overall, I was very pleased to hear and be a part of the radical conversations and movement to meet the criteria set by the IPCC. Mahesh Ramanujam, President and CEO of USGBC and GBCI, shared his belief that partnership is leadership. If I can make a change at the local level by helping equip participants with the tools they need to succeed as leaders of their organizations, their communities and the sustainability movement, then I am “All In.” I also will remember Amal’s words, that helping one life is enough.

This article was originally published on USGBC.org.