On the other hand, every week I feel lucky that I still have a job and still receive a paycheck. Even though we have not had a new project come into our office for almost 10 months.  I guess that is the benefit of working for a smaller architectural firm that is well established.  This is not the owners first recession, so he is a little more prepared for the slow down.  But we have not been totally insulated from the slow down.  We had to let go two of our employees back in January, which equates to almost a third of our staff.  But what makes things nerve wracking is the fact that we have submitted more qualifications statements so far this year than we did all last year.  And out of 10 interviews in the past 3 months, all that work has only landed us one small job that won’t even start up for another month.  I guess we are lucky to get calls to submit for work, or that there is even work out there at all.  I just would like to see the management of the firm out hitting the pavement a little more instead of just wait for Request For Qualifications.

As a result of the slow down, our office has actually been taking advantage of the time to re-tool itself.  First it is starting to think about a new brand.  How can we reinvent ourselves?  We are also updating our website to get the most current projects online.  We have even updated our current CAD software to the latest version and revisited our project standards in preparation for the next project.  It has even given me the opportunity to organize the AIA Ohio Affordable Green Home design competition utilizing more office time.  Something that I did not expect back in December when I received the approval to move forward with the competition.  I have even been given the opportunity to teach Greening Your Home seminars to local homeowners, which should put a few extra dollars in my pocket.  But most importantly potentially drum up some work for the office.

I try and keep my mind off the fact that we are slow and keep myself busy with the organizations that I am involved with.  I will even get back to studying for the ARE (4 more exams to go!) once the competition rolls out later this month.  So hopefully I will have some better news to report within the coming weeks/months as my office prepares for a couple more interviews.  Until then I will continue to absorb as much knowledge as I can with the free time I have and do my part with the marketing efforts and the occasional RFI or LEED submittal that comes across my desk.

-Josh

At this point we are still targeting a Gold certification.  Unfortunatly we still have a year of construction ahead of us to even determine if that will happen.  So periodically I will post some construction photos as well as other updates as it may relate to LEED and share some of the things that I have learned along the way.

In the meantime, enjoy the short video.

The 2009 Open Architecture Challenge invites the global design and construction community to collaborate with primary and secondary school teachers and students to create safer, healthier and smarter learning environments. Teams can partner with a school of their choice or design a classroom for Orient Global’s school-building partners.

This year’s jurors currently includes Dave Eggers, Michelle Kaufmann, Hilary Cottam, Kigge Hvid and others. More will be added over the course of the registration period. The winning designer/school team will be given up to $50,000 in funding for classroom construction and upgrading, plus a design grant of $5,000 for the designer to help the school complete the project.

Boy were we wrong!  First we had trouble locating three reputable contractors in the area.  Now we don’t know if it was our lack of personal connections in the area since the project is an out of state job for us or just that the project was remote enough to warrant increasing our search radius from the site.  However we did find three contractors within an hour of our site.  So hurdle one cleared.

In the effort to help control the costs and to verify our estimates, we decided to work with one of the interested contractors in the area to give us preliminary pricing on our addition/renovation of the cottage.  The cost came in almost $100,000 over budget.  Which had us rushing to make adjustments to our design and construction documents to bring the cost down before releasing the final drawings to all of the contractors for bidding.

Our second hurdle was just keeping three contractors interested in bidding the project.  During the bidding phase two of our original three contractors dropped out and were not going to submit bids.  What?! Seriously?!  So in a scramble we were able to locate another contractor that is actually two states away that was willing to bid the project, and by default won the contract because he was the only one that actually submitted a bid.

Believe it or not, the contractor we worked with to get the preliminary pricing from was sticking to his price, even after we made adjustments to bring the cost down.  However it ended up being for the best because this particular contractor works on a time and material basis only.  So basically there is no guaranteed maximum price for the owner.  The contractors reasoning behind this is that he cannot take the rise of a guaranteed maximum price for our owner.  But our owner cannot take the risk of not knowing what his final cost would be.

Consequently the final numbers were still $50,000 over budget.  So the past couple of weeks we have been working with the owner and the selected contractor to bring the cost down even more.  So now that we have finally got the project in line with the owner’s budget, we are looking forward to the project beginning construction within the next month.

The report, released this week by the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, found that a 50 percent energy improvement beyond federal standards is technically impossible. A 30 percent target is achievable, but only by adding a million-dollar solar system that could take up to 100 years to pay for itself.

Experts say it is one of the first efforts they have seen to question whether the green building’s economic foundation is as solid as advocates claim.

Read the entire article here.

However since it’s release two organizations have stood up against this claim and have argued that this study was generated to discredit organizations that have been pushing for more energy efficient commercial buildings while directly benefiting Real Estate Developers that turn over their building stock within a short amount of time once the project is complete, therefore never truly experiencing the payback for energy efficiency.

Architecture 2030 had this to say in their response to NAIOP:

It is clear from a simple analysis of the study that NAIOP commissioned a building energy efficiency analysis to support predetermined results. They contracted with ConSol, an energy-modeling firm, and asked them to analyze five (yes, only five) efficiency measures for an imaginary, square-shaped, four-story office building with completely sealed windows and an equal amount of un-shaded glass on all four sides of the building. In other words, analyze an energy Hog.

Read the full article here.

BetterBricks took a more personal approach their response:

Those who have been designing, building and promoting high performance buildings for a long time are finding the study very difficult to swallow. But let’s all use it as a learning opportunity. Energy efficiency advocates now can see where the commercial real estate mainstream is in their thinking and efficiency experts can take this opportunity to inform NAIOP and others that these buildings are being achieved today – and they are financially feasible.

Read the full article here.

As a professional in the building industry, I can also speak to experience and agree with John Jennings from BetterBricks, that meeting these energy efficiency targets are financially feasible and can be done with standard off the shelf products.  My latest commercial project that is currently under construction is designed to exceed today’s energy efficiency standard by 31%.  Even my latest residential project is designed to be 45% more energy efficient by today’s standards.  So I ask you to read the articles and determine who you think the credible source is.

-Josh

Which brings me back to our action plan that I have mentioned in a previous post (here).  So the spreadsheet has gone through some revisions as we understand more how the credits are to be tracked.

LEED Action Plan

However the contractor is using the spreadsheet as a substitute for the actual product data and or manufacturer letters that we need to have on file for if the USGBC decided to audit one of these credits.  And this has been apart of an ongoing problem with this project from day one, incomplete submittals.  Which puts us in a hard place to be in.  First, we do not want to accept the submittal until we have all the data that we requested in our specifications.  However if we reject it without review, the owner thinks we are holding up the project.  So it is difficult to keep track of everything when we are getting multiple submittals for each product.

I would like to hear from anyone who has had trouble getting the required information for LEED documentation and how they dealt with it.

-Josh

So his modest single story cottage will be truly transformed from the image below to what we hope to be an extremely energy efficient, durable and beautiful home.

Existing cottage

Proposed design sketch

Subsequently we are refining the design and bringing it more in line with our clients’ budget.  However this gives us a basic concept to work with as we select materials and generate construction details.  So now I get to really determine how this building is constructed and performs.  Furthermore as I progress, I am finding that I enjoy this aspect of the job more than the actual design work.

-Josh

As you can see I have hidden the identity of the company because there is nothing wrong with their product (fire extinguisher cabinet), and I happen to agree with their statements, however amusing it was at first to read.  If we are anticipating this product to get us over the hump to meet our projects recycled content or regional material goal, then we have not been doing our job correctly.

]]> http://www.symhome.net/blog/2008/09/product-manufacturer-leed-non-compliance/feed/ 0 http://www.symhome.net/blog/2008/09/leed-action-plan-and-documentation/ http://www.symhome.net/blog/2008/09/leed-action-plan-and-documentation/#comments Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:38:22 +0000 Joshua Lloyd http://www.symhome.net/wordpress/employerupdate/?p=13 Well after 2 two years of working on design and construction documents for my first LEED project, we are finally in the construction phase. Which for any LEED project means additional paperwork to contend with, along with shop drawing review.

Well after a week and a half of reviewing hollow metal frame shop drawings (which had no associated LEED data attached may I add), I get to jump right into scrutinizing our contractors LEED action plan. Which is basically a spreadsheet that we provided to them (currently flawed) to document how they plan on meeting the required benchmarks for Recycled Content, Regional Materials and FSC certified woods. So with this not only my first LEED project, but the office as well as the project manager working for the contractor. So it is basically the blind leading the blind at this point. But I guess the frustrating part is some of the office expectations of the contractor, as well as the lack of research and understanding from the contractor along with the fact that they are not submitting the appropriate forms and data with the shop drawings that we need to track the progress of these credits to get our buildings LEED certification.

I don’t know exactly where I was going with this post, or who I ended up complaining about more. But I guess what I have learned so far in the two months that this project as been under construction are that even if the requirements are in the project manual, you will not necessarily receive them when you want them, and sometimes you just have to bite your tongue when people are expecting when no one else knows what to expect.

-Josh

So after almost two weeks of working on developing a few design schemes for the client to review, I sit here and wait. Wondering what scheme are they going to choose, how they want to alter them, or blend schemes together, etc. Plus there are things about each scheme that can make the project very exciting, such as taking advantage of the views, daylighting and utilizing prevailing winds for natural ventilation.

I just can’t wait to start with the next step of the process and refine the design to allow the cottage to work the way they want the house to function both today and as the family grows and changes.

-Josh