Integrated Design

The Single Most Important Key To Sustainable Building Success

Sustainable buildings get built by taking a different approach: Integrated Design. By comparison, conventional building teams are usually hierarchical, compartmentalized and slow to adapt. The result: interactions and synergies between various building systems get lost. That is because the team, each member encased in his/her own “silo” of expertise, subscribes to a “that’s the way we have always done it.” rationale even in light of new and improved building materials and technologies. For example, in one case the mechanical engineer refused to downsize the cooling system even though a high quality lighting design had reduced lighting load s by 30% because he had “never had to adjust before.”

The reason for such thinking is easy to understand. “Cheap energy for the past 50 years has made designers lazy and incompetent in energy-efficient design,” says Jerry Yudelson, PE and LEED AP. “There has been little economic incentive to change.

Times are changing fast but the business of design, construction and operations has yet to catch up. It’s time now to train architects and engineers explicitly in how to deliver far more energy-efficient buildings on a conventional budget, using the power of integrated design and bringing new technologies into the built environment.”

Integrated Design Proven To Save Costs for Varied Commercial Projects

In Oregon, Mt. Angel Abbey’s Center for Theological Studies received the benefit of an integrated design approach. By bringing together key engineers, architects and contractors, the seminary incorporated daylighting and natural ventilation to increase energy savings in the classrooms by 50% for an increase of less than 10% in construction costs.

Thanks to the integrated design process, Mountain Equipment Co-op of Canada lowered their energy costs by more than 50% and lowered capital costs by 41% due to the reuse of building materials. All stakeholders—owner, architect, engineers, landscape architect and project manager—sat down before a single line was drawn.

The scenario was no different for the design team of the OHSU Center for Health & Healing. Interface Engineering, the project’s mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineer, finds the integrated process differs from traditional design in two important respects. First of all, goal setting for sustainable design starts right in the beginning of the process—in the programming and conceptual design phases. Secondly, the entire design team gets involved much earlier in the process. That way, engineers can provide input to architectural choices affecting energy use, water use and indoor air quality. And other members of the design team can provide the necessary expertise regarding, for example, cool roofs, photovoltaics and heat recovery.

Integrated Design & Lessons Learned

To see what has been most effective for developers and builders, review the ideas about integrated design below.

• Cost is driven more by experience than by technology. Partner with contractors with a track record and interest in sustainable building who will cover the cost of their own learning curve.
• START your project using an integrated design approach to deliver higher performance at less cost. Adding “green” elements at the end will escalate costs quickly.
• Set goals early and defend them. Make sure they are quantified so they are defensible at the value engineering stage.
• Early in the process use lifecycle costing to get true cost and savings of features/benefits.
• Focus first on synergies that reduce loads and second on conventional, high-efficiency systems to meet the reduced load. Synergies such as those experienced in the OHSU project drive costs down and savings up.
• Extra planning and design effort at the front ends pays off in reduced change orders and rework later in the process. Design time is cheap compared to construction costs to fix mistakes.
• Use proven tools to ensure successful outcomes, for example:

     - LEED program (USGBC) to evaluate and track sustainability goals
     - Advanced Buildings Core Performance (NBI) for a pre-engineered approach for 
       buildings under 70,000 square feet
     - Green Globes online auditing tool for assessment