February/March 2009
Sustainability Strategy
C O N T E N T S
Executive Director's Corner: Crossing The Potomoc
LEED: Fort Carson Building Awarded First Army LEED Gold
Neighborhood Development: LEED Neighborhood Development in Colorado
Recyling News: Some Thoughts on Recycling Old Office Furnishings
Sustainable Development: Creating a Sustainable Future
Getting Green Done: Forgive Me Father, I Don't Have the Money
Sustainable Strategy: Creating Effective Collaboration and Leadership Tactics
Executive Director's Corner: Major Speaker Announced for May Conference
Metro Branch Update: Denver Metro Branch is Looking for Volunteers
VISION
Promote responsibility for Colorado's environmental legacy.
MISSION
Advance and promote sustainable planning, design, construction and operation of the built environment through education, improving industry guidelines, policy advocacy, and information and resource sharing.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Dana Kose, Chair
Universal Development Company
Jim Bradburn, Vice Chair, Chair Elect
RMH Group
Megan Christensen, Secretary
US LendLease Communities
Sebastian De Atucha, Treasurer
3BY
Clay Benson, Director at Large
Mortenson Construction
Mike Lowell, Director, Advocacy
US GSA
Bobby Molinary, Director, Membership
Julie Edwards, Director, Education
Oz Architecture
Matt Arabasz, Director, Northern Colorado Branch
RB+B Architects, Inc.
Joshua Radoff, Director, Resource Development, and Communications
YRG Sustainability Consultants
Bethany Trumble, Director, Southern Colorado Branch
Farnsworth Group, Inc.
Liz Sharrer, Director, Metro Branch
Holland & Hart
Mike Kolesar, Director, Emerging Green Builders
Facilities Engineering Associates
Deb Kleinman, Executive Director
USGBC Colorado Chapter
Colorado Building Green is the official newsletter of the U.S. Green Building Council – Colorado Chapter, and is published bi-monthly. If you are interested in submiting a story, ideas or other information for publication, please contact the editor at dgloffreda@msn.com
Creating Effective Collaboration and Leadership Tactics
Renewables, Sustainables and the Path to Profits
By Tracy Houston, Chairman of the Board, iCAST
" One real wild card from a contextual intelligence position is carbon emission...Wall Street is beginning to look more closely at the costs of carbon emissions." |
In building a top of the line LEED Platinum Class A office product, the mapping often does not go deep enough beyond the LEED scorecard. Magnificent gains in worker productivity often trump the environmental and energy gains that are already realized. Go deeper still in the mapping process and realize these buildings generate huge profits when sold in a commercial real estate market overloaded with SUV-type structures. The car company executives are late to respond. The Class A office clients don’t hang on long enough to get the profit message.
Context matters when an industry is evolving. Forming contextual intelligence is one of the advantages of mapping stakeholder concerns because it produces information to anticipate market changes and customer preferences. This approach and the data it is producing has driven the consumer goods industry for years. In fact, some of the larger consumer goods businesses are looking for “unanticipated needs.” This strategy discovers emerging consumer trends; which, in turn, drives research and development. However, the culture inside a company must value innovation and change from a competitive advantage point of view. If the building industry systematically gathered stakeholder information, it could also be used to drive profits and gain market share.
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This is not just about sound strategic planning; rather it is about a mapping and anticipation process that is ongoing. Executives with anticipatory skills can be particularly helpful to an industry that is not good at predicating change, like the construction arena.
One real wild card from a contextual intelligence position is carbon emission. Traditional capital gravitates to the highest return with the most surety. For the last several years the U.S. government has been enacting regulations that are providing the surety portion of funding. In addition, Wall Street is beginning to look more closely at the costs of carbon emissions. In the spring of 2007 more than 50 U.S. investors with a combined total of $4 trillion under management called on the U.S. Congress to enact legislation to curb carbon emissions. With the United States moving towards regulating emissions and Europe already imposing greenhouse gas limits, exposure to carbon changes poses a risk that could undermine competitiveness in the building sector.
Proposed reforms have a sense of the ‘all’ (many sources of energy) for energy security and competitive advantage. For some in the building sector the green sources of energy and sustainability practices will be transformative with new thinking, new markets and profit gain. For leaders who lack strategic agility, the green sources will emerge as an element with a more long-term perspective that does not warrant exploration of the risks and rewards the change presents.