Procurement Path for Energy-Efficient Buildings

Unfortunately, design and construction schedules are tight and decisions must be made in the need of the moment. Even with strong energy goals, not everyone bases decisions on the potential impact to those goals. The details of the building often are still being worked out after construction begins. So, how can we achieve a building that meets the owner’s performance criteria? Which teams understand the value proposition and deliver the results? How do you encourage and motivate design and construction teams? Some owners are taking a new approach to procure and achieve performance by using an absolute, measurable energy goal set at the beginning of the project, prior to design. In this article, we lay the framework for an emerging approach to establish and execute tangible energy performance goals. It is intended to simply introduce some base knowledge for when design teams see this requirement in an request for proposal (RFP) for the first time. We will start with two new construction projects that blended a traditional design-build procurement process with a more open, collaborative approach. Future articles will dive deeper into these concepts and the impact on measured building performance. The University of Chicago is now midway through the design of its 390,000 ft2 (36 232 m2) residence hall. This project, scheduled for completion in 2016, sought an effective way to set a new construction energy performance-based target that they needed to hit to achieve campus-wide energy reduction goals. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Research Support Facility (RSF) project set out to demonstrate the integration of high performance design and procurement practices in a replicable manner. This 360,000 ft2 (33 445 m2) Class A office building achieved both a stringent performance-based target and net zero design upon completion in 2010. Both projects had distinctive project University of Chicago Campus North Residence Hall and Dining Commons.