In September 2005, as construction was starting at the Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center in Orange, Texas, the property was severely damaged by Hurricane Rita. The building team led by Lake/Flato Architects salvaged storm-felled trees and incorporated the wood into the project.

Adaptive thinking by the building team is common to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Committee on the Environment (COTE) Top Ten Green Projects for 2009. This year’s ten selections include a private school and an affordable housing development, a town hall, and the headquarters for a regional energy utility.

Two of these ten projects, both LEED Platinum-certified, were recently covered in depth in ArchitectureWeek — the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation synagogue in Evanston, Illinois, designed by Ross Barney Architects, was a front page story in April, and Synergy, the first phase of the Dockside Green mixed-use development in Victoria, Canada, designed by Busby Perkins + Will, was featured in October 2008.

Protecting Paradise

The Shangri La complex serves as an interpretive center for the site’s native ecosystems — including cypress and tupelo swamp, wooded uplands, and prairie lowlands — and also as a study and research facility. It received the still-rare LEED Platinum certification for new construction (LEED-NC)

Located on 252 acres (102 hectares), the nature center includes a variety of spaces for learning, from an exhibit hall and a laboratory to three outdoor classrooms located deep in the swamp. The project worked to minimized negative impacts on the ecosystems, and also included some natural area restoration.

The structures in sensitive areas use helical pier foundations designed to minimize the disruption of water flow. The buildings are largely clustered, with conditioned indoor space minimized by developing an outdoor circulation system with walkways sheltered by flat roofs of steel and wood.

Sustainable Town Center

The LEED Platinum-targeted Portola Valley Town Center in Portola Valley, California, contains a library, community center, and town hall. Co-architects Siegel & Strain Architects and Goring & Straja Architects Architects developed the design for the facility, which replaces a seismically unsafe complex, through a collaborative process with high community involvement.

The architects reduced the built footprint by 20 percent compared to the previous town center, and clustered the operational, administrative, and public spaces together in one corner of the site, allowing them to preserving existing redwood groves and oak savanna while restoring continuity between open spaces. The old complex was deconstructed, and many materials were reused as beams, paneling, countertops, and structural fill. Exterior cladding and louvers on the new building are made from salvaged wood, and the wood flooring is local eucalyptus.

Careful building orientation, in addition to daylighting, natural ventilation, sunshades, and thermal mass, reduced overall energy use and allowed for smaller mechanical systems. A 76-kilowatt photovoltaic system supplies 40 percent of the building’s electricity. A piped section of creek has been “daylighted,” and the old culvert is now used as a cistern for storing up to 40,000 gallons (150,000 liters) of rainwater.

Platinum Office Conversion

Weber Thompson designed the renovation and expansion of a Seattle industrial structure into a speculative office building with ground-floor retail. The Terry Thomas has received a LEED Platinum rating for its interiors and a Gold rating for core and shell. The building is located near a new streetcar line in the city’s burgeoning South Lake Union district, also home to the Discovery Center at South Lake Union, from the 2008 Top Ten list.

The four-story Terry Thomas building is organized around a central courtyard, something less common in the Pacific Northwest than in warmer regions of the United States. The configuration facilitates daylighting and natural ventilation; in fact, the building has no air conditioning. The castellated steel beam structure, chosen for strength, lower cost, and reduced material, was left exposed and painted white, allowing air to circulate and light to penetrate the shallow floor plates.

“From June of 2008 through March of 2009, our kBTU output has been half of what you would normally see in a Class A office building,” says Scott Thompson, a principal of Weber Thompson, which moved its offices into the building.

Much of the energy efficiency is achieved through a well-sealed building envelope. Other contributing components include efficient appliances, efficient lighting fixtures with photoelectric and occupancy sensors, and low-emissivity coated glass to reduce unwanted heat gain.

Green Affordable Housing

The Gish Family Apartments in San Jose, California, are designated for residents making 35 to 50 percent of the median income, with about a third of the units set aside for residents with developmental disabilities. OJK Architecture and Planning designed the 35-unit affordable housing complex for First Community Housing.

The transit-oriented development received LEED Gold certification under both LEED for Homes and LEED-NC. It’s also a visually compelling work of architecture, particularly with its distinctive stepped facade and the right-angled sunshade rising from its top.

The project is located on an urban brownfield site adjacent to light rail, which reduced the need for parking. That allowed the building to achieve a density of 81 units per acre (203 units per hectare) — relatively high for the area. Other sustainable features include rooftop photovoltaic solar panels that provide 30 percent of the building’s overall electricity, high-performance insulation, double-glazed windows, and high-efficiency water-heating systems.

A design-build process with a negotiated contract brought in the general contractor and most subcontractors at the beginning of the process, as well as sustainable design and financial consultants, to help identify opportunities to increase efficiency and stay below budget.

Improving Environmental Welfare

The World Headquarters for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) in Yarmouthport, Massachusetts, provides 54,000 square feet (5,000 square meters) of space for research, administration, and a worldwide data center. Designed by designLAB architects, the complex has a distinctive look, inspired by the sailboats of Cape Cod, with interwoven panels of glass and wood.

Created on a moderate budget (about $220 per square foot, or $2,400 per square meter), the project achieved LEED Gold certification. The complex’s three buildings are located at the north, east, and west edges of the site to maximize the space for a half-acre (0.2-hectare) courtyard of native grasses.

The orientation also provides protection from prevailing winds, and maximizes passive solar capability to harness warmth in winter and provide shade from summer sun, aided by adjustable louvers on the south-facing curtain wall.

The headquarters were designed to use 45 percent less energy for heating and air conditioning than codes stipulate, and 32 percent less total energy than a typical office building. The project previously received a 2009 AIA Honor Award for interiors.

Energy-Saving Utility

Maple Grove, Minnesota-based Great River Energy, a not-for-profit electric utility cooperative, sought a new headquarters that would model energy-efficient design for emulation by electric coop members across the state. The company succeeded with a building by Perkins + Will that earned LEED Platinum certification.

The 166,000-square-foot (15,400-square-meter) building achieves an estimated 47.5 percent energy cost savings compared to ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2004. The project combines underfloor displacement ventilation with a water-source heat pump and a heat recovery system to bring ultra-efficient heating and cooling.

The four-story structure has glass curtain walls over a concrete frame. To limit occupant discomfort near building perimeters due to summer heat gain and winter heat loss in Minnesota’s extreme climate, the architects located circulation near the perimeter, with all occupied workspaces concentrated inboard, daylit by a series of narrow atria.

The building gets approximately ten percent of its power from wind and three to five percent from photovoltaic panels. This combination of energy efficiency and onsite renewable energy reduces the facility’s fossil fuel use by 75 percent and cuts carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent, meeting the 2015 goals of the 2030 Challenge.

Educational Exemplar

The Chartwell School for children with language-related learning difficulties, located in Seaside, California, achieves net-zero electricity use, aided by photovoltaic panels. EHDD Architecture’s sustainable design strategies, executed on a relatively modest budget, earned the building a LEED-NC Platinum rating,

A premium was placed on daylighting, achieved with the help of tall, north-facing windows and clerestories, along with skylights. All teaching spaces are lit naturally during daytime hours, and photo-sensors help reduce the use of electric lighting.

The building is naturally ventilated, primarily through operable windows, and cooling was avoided completely, further contributing to a reduction in energy use of 57 percent below California Title 24 energy strictures. Radiant heating eliminates the need for air ducts, reduces the size of mechanical equipment, and helps keep the learning environment quieter.

The classrooms were kept to a small 650 square feet (60 square meters) — fitting for the school’s small class sizes of eight to ten students. But to ensure flexibility of the building for future uses, classrooms are organized in pairs separated by nonstructural partitions.

To make sustainable design a visible part of the students’ education, a 9,000-gallon (34,000-liter) cistern stores rooftop rainwater runoff, which is used for flushing toilets. The outfall from the cistern waters the science garden, where students grow organic food. Rainwater otherwise infiltrates on site.

Seaside Sustainability

The Charles Hostler Student Center provides sports facilities, an auditorium, an amphitheater, and gathering spaces for students and faculty on the campus of the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. VJAA tailored the facility to the Mediterranean climate, working with associate architect Samir Khairallah & Partners.

The 204,000-square-foot (19,000-square-meter) center consists of multiple building volumes connected by gardens oriented toward the sea. Solar studies informed building massing, orientation, shading, and internal daylighting strategies.

The project uses seawater cooling from below the site, with a low-energy absorption chiller that runs off a heat source, requiring only a small amount of electricity to run pumps. So, instead of adding huge chiller equipment to the electrical grid, the facility either recovers some waste heat from its own power generation, or produces steam with boilers. This system allows the center to provide chilled water and cooling for the lower campus.

In addition to emphasizing air movement, the design incorporates radiant cooling for areas of the buildings where larger gatherings occur regularly, such as the gym, pool, theater, and cafe. Solar panels heat water for the pool and for other uses.

The Hostler Center uses excess steam produced by the university to provide what little additional heating is needed in the warm Lebanese climate. The additional air system provides dehumidified, fresh air. Compared to an all-air system, this system reduces consumption significantly.

The project previously received a 2009 AIA Honor Award for architecture.

Chartwell School serves children with learning differences, including dyslexia, in grades one through eight.

At the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, the new 204,000 square foot (19,000-square-meter) Charles Hostler Student Center provides a variety of athletic facilities, an auditorium, and a cafeteria for students.
SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE

Synergy, the LEED Platinum-rated first phase of Dockside Green in Victoria, Canada.

The Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response Standard (HAZWOPER) applies to five distinct groups of employers and their employees. These include any employees who are exposed or potentially exposed to hazardous substances — including hazardous waste — and who are engaged in one of the following operations:

clean-up operations — required by a governmental body, whether federal, state, local, or other involving hazardous substances — that are conducted at uncontrolled hazardous waste sites;

corrective actions involving clean-up operations at sites covered by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA) as amended (42 U.S.C. 6901 et seq.);

voluntary clean-up operations at sites recognized by federal, state, local, or other governmental body as uncontrolled hazardous waste sites;

operations involving hazardous wastes that are conducted at treatment, storage, and disposal facilities regulated by Title 40 Code of Federal Regulations Parts 264 and 265 pursuant to RCRA, or by agencies under agreement with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to implement RCRA regulations; and

emergency response operations for releases of, or substantial threats of releases of, hazardous substances regardless of the location of the hazard.

(More information can be found in osha documents as specified by 1910.120 and 1926.65)

OSHA has authorized several specific HAZMAT training courses know has the hazwoper training courses.These courses are comprised of the 40 hour hazwoper, 24 hour hazwoper and the 8 hour hazwoper refresher course.

Many OSHA authorized sites like OSHAu.co offer hazwoper training courses online.These courses can be administered in self-paced, downloadable modules which allow the student to complete the required training at their leisure.Online training also provides employers with the benefit of allowing their employees to take the required training from any internet-based computer eliminating travel costs and while maintaining productivity. The benefits of online training are realized through increased safety and health of employees and an increased protection of our environment and it’s resources.

“Are we ready to build green?” That is the big question facing many of today’s building owners, designers and developers. They may want to build green, but might not be sure how to start a project down that path.

“ Building green can seem like a daunting proposition, since sustainable technology is a large, constantly evolving body of knowledge,” said Stephen Lamb, Executive Vice President of the Mechanical Contractors Association (MCA) of Greater Chicago. “Fortunately, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System can provide valuable guidance. Building professionals interested in building green should look into LEED and ultimately, strive to become LEED Accredited Professionals.”

Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the LEED Green Building Rating System is the benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high-performance green buildings, which can be rated at one of several levels, including Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.

“ LEED has proven itself as the premiere - if not the only - legitimate rating system for commercial green buildings,” said Dan Bulley, Senior Vice President of the MCA of Greater Chicago and Executive Director of the Green Construction Institute. “Even so, some owners and even designers don’t feel that LEED certification is necessary. While that decision is up to the project owners, the decision-makers involved should consider the merits of LEED certified buildings.”

According to Bulley, these merits include:

• An increase in the value of the building, both for sale and lease.

• Major savings through the conservation of energy, water and materials.

• A healthier, more comfortable environment for tenants and employees, which increases occupancy rates and lowers absenteeism and sick days.

• Substantially reduced impact on the environment.

• Tax rebates, expedited plan review, fee waivers and zoning allowances (availability subject to the building’s location).

“ It would be possible for you to create a green building without LEED certification,” Bulley said, “but you would have no criteria for gauging the building’s effectiveness. It would be like buying an automobile without a mileage rating, or food without a list of ingredients.”

Once the decision has been made to build a LEED building, Bulley said, it is important for the owner and other decision-makers to take the time to research their options, since the different levels of LEED certification greatly affect the cost and time involved in a project.

“ You can select ‘how green’ you want your building to be,” Bulley said. “LEED buildings are certified at four different levels, and the highest, platinum, will cost more, but they may pay for themselves quickly, too,” he said.

If you are doing a LEED project, Bulley stressed, you will want to work with a design team that has experience with LEED. “Be sure to see their portfolio of LEED projects,” he said. “The number of architects and engineers with experience in LEED is still somewhat limited, so if you like a designer with whom you’ve already worked, you can bring in a LEED consultant to help. In some cases, if your architect has LEED experience, he or she can be your LEED consultant and even your decorator. The MCA had a good experience with that on our own building.”

According to Bulley, it is also important to pick the right construction team. “Not only should you pick a general contractor with LEED experience,” he said, “but you should also make sure the project’s subcontractors have LEED experience. That is why MCA has been training its member contractors in green building for several years. The effectiveness of any green building hinges largely upon its heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems - the specialty of mechanical contractors. If the contractors involved in energy systems like HVAC and lighting are not familiar with LEED, it could have negative repercussions for your project.”

One major advantage of LEED building, Bulley stated, is that you can play to your strengths. “If a green project is for a company in the water business, focus on water-saving technologies. If the project is for a company in the health business, focus on low-emitting materials and increased ventilation,” he said.

To find out more about MCA of Greater Chicago and green building, visit www.mca.org. For additional information visit the green contractor website at www.greencontractors.us.

A five-year effort has resulted in the new NFPA 400, Hazardous Materials Code, which promises help for anyone responsible for the safe storage of hazardous materials.

NFPA Journal®,  May/June 2009

By Alan R. Earls

In May of 1995, almost within sight of NFPA’s Massachusetts headquarters, a four-alarm fire broke out in a big-box retail store. Investigators determined that the probable culprit was a confluence of leaking swimming pool chemicals along with leaking motor oil that had been stored with new lawnmowers.

The following year, another large retailer, this time a home improvement store in Albany, Georgia, experienced a similar conflagration. The fire grew so rapidly that fire personnel were unable to contain it, resulting in the complete loss of the building and its contents. While no specific cause was ever established, the store did handle large quantities of pool chemicals, and the way they were stored and handled, along with their proximity to other materials, was thought to have contributed to the severity of the fire.

These two events underscore part of the motivation behind development of the new NFPA 400, Hazardous Materials Code—namely, the challenges posed by the volume and variety of hazardous materials that have become part of everyday commerce. Indeed, in the trucking industry, the largest single section in the Commercial Drivers License (CDL) handbook—the document that is the basis for licensing truck drivers in the U.S.—has to do with safely handling hazardous materials. For building code enforcers, businesses, and others responsible for safely storing the wide range of increasingly common hazardous materials, the challenge has been just as great. However, with no equivalent of the CDL, guidance has been hard to get and, when available, incomplete and confusing.

Now, after a five-year effort by the NFPA Committee on Hazardous Chemicals, a solution is finally emerging. According to Guy Colonna, NFPA division manager, the Committee on Hazardous Chemicals is formally proposing NFPA 400, which incorporates four preexisting documents: NFPA 430, Code for the Storage of Liquid and Solid Oxidizers; NFPA 432, Code For the Storage of Organic Peroxide Formulations; NFPA 434, Code for the Storage of Pesticides; and NFPA 490, Code for the Storage of Ammonium Nitrate.

“This is evolution, not revolution,” says Colonna. “It combines existing documents without changing the specifics, but now enforcement officials can go into an occupancy and evaluate several materials by looking to one source.”

SEEING A NEED, FINDING A TEMPLATE

According to Samuel Vanover, chair of the Committee on Hazardous Chemicals and fire inspector for the Jefferson Parish Fire Department in Kenner, Louisiana, there were compelling reasons to consolidate existing documents. “The original incentive for the new code came from the fact that NFPA documents operate on three- to five-year editing cycles, so as we would complete revisions on one document we found we had to immediately turn around and revise the others,” Vanover says. “We thought by combining the basic, common information together, as we have now done in Chapters 1 through 10 of NFPA 400, we would be able to do this one time instead of four times, making a more efficient process and a better document for users.”

Although NFPA 400 is the first comprehensive and unified NFPA hazardous materials code, it is nevertheless part of a series of documents with a long history. According to Vanover, the National Board of Fire Underwriters (NBFU), a predecessor of NFPA, issued its first hazardous material code in 1910—he’s quick to point out that the new code takes effect exactly a century later, in 2010 in NFPA 40, Storage and Handling of Cellulose Nitrate Film. Vanover says when he started in the field in the 1980s, the fire service had already become proactive in trying to address the challenge of hazardous materials through better training—but that was as far as things went. “When I was trained as a firefighter, I learned a lot about hazardous material fires,” he says. “But later, when I went into fire prevention, I found there was no single-source document to address hazardous materials from a prevention standpoint.”

Vanover says the issue always stayed in the back of his mind. Fortuitously, he ended up as chair of the Committee on Hazardous Chemicals. In the fall of 2004, at a meeting in Mesa, Arizona, the committee decided to address the difficulties of maintaining so many separate documents by trying to consolidate them into one. To that end, the committee requested permission from the Standards Council to move ahead.

“I certainly didn’t need to be sold,” says Vanover. What’s more, he notes, everyone else on the committee had the same reaction: Why hasn’t this been done before?

Vanover says the Standards Council offered the 400 number, which had not previously been assigned—and since the majority of the committee’s codes were “in the 400s,” he says, it made sense.

“Everyone was on board and everyone was in agreement,” Vanover says. “They just didn’t know it yet.”

Vanover says that most of the information that would be needed for the new NFPA 400 was already available within the existing codes, or within other NFPA documents; it was just a matter of combining it. NFPA 1, Fire Code™, already had a section that dealt with some aspects of hazardous materials. However, the committee was determined to create a stand-alone document that could grow more naturally than if it was actually included in NFPA 1 itself, which covers many other issues, such as exiting and fire department access. Still, says Vanover, NFPA 1 provided a good template for handling the general requirements, while permitting subsequent chapters to deal with specific types of chemicals. “Since NFPA 1 was the property of NFPA,” he says, “we used a lot of the format and the requirements and combined that with our committee’s original documents.”

Despite the wealth of existing documents and the NFPA 1 template, Vanover says crafting NFPA 400 was still a long and sometimes difficult process, one that required between 12 and 20 teleconferences each year as well as in-person meetings at least twice a year. Over time, the name changed, too, from the originally proposed Hazardous Chemicals Code to the Hazardous Materials Code. In the context within which the committee was working, the word “materials” made more sense, explains Vanover.

In addition to the general challenges posed by the process, Vanover says an assortment of larger issues also surfaced. One was the addition of Chapter 7, Emergency Planning, Fire Risk Control, and Chemical Hazard Requirements for Industrial Processes, which is all new information and deals with industrial processes. Because that chapter was new to the committee, it faced some minor resistance from some of the group’s industry representatives.

However, according to Colonna, only one individual, representing the American Chemistry Council (ACC), actually opposed the final draft language, on the grounds that the committee should only work with the material over which it already had direct control, rather than using material extracted from other sources.

As this issue of Journal was going to press, a number of NITMAMs (notice of intent to make a motion) had been filed by ACC focusing on those concerns, namely the way NFPA 400 incorporates extracted material from NFPA 55, Storage, Use, and Handling of Compressed Gases and Cryogenic Fluids in Portable and Stationary Containers, Cylinders, and Tanks, and NFPA 40.

Despite those concerns, Vanover says the majority of the committee came to believe that the goal of producing a single-source reference document was too important to give up simply because of procedural issues. Areas of disagreement will be presented for action at the Association Technical Meeting in Chicago.

FINDING COMMON GROUND

Robert L. James, a former Minnesota fire marshal who serves on the Committee on Hazardous Chemicals on behalf of Underwriters Laboratories, Inc., says that while NFPA 400 represents a big step forward, it’s still mere “baby steps” in terms of where the document should go.

For example, areas where NFPA has well-established documents—flammable/combustible liquids, propane, and others—were deliberately excluded from consideration for this version of NFPA 400, but will be considered for inclusion during subsequent revisions.

“As a committee we still have a ways to go,” James admits. “But once we have an official starting point, in the form of NFPA 400, we will be able to get input from the whole membership, nationally and internationally,” to create a larger, more comprehensive code. For now, he says, the new NFPA 400 addresses an immediate need. “Ultimately, we were able to address all the points that seemed to be in conflict,” he says. “Everyone at the table knew the document had to come out and they were ready to compromise and move ahead.”

Those individual concerns were balanced by a desire to develop a workable compromise, one that would also make business sense. “Industries seek uniformity in the application of codes nationwide,” says Larry Fluer, a consultant who is on the committee. “They don’t want different requirements in California and Maine.” He cites the example of interchangeable commercial structure design: “If you travel around the country you will see McDonalds and Home Depots, and whether you are in Washington or Georgia, the architecture isn’t peculiar to that state—it’s a national architecture.” Likewise, says Fluer, industry wants to have people trained to work with one hazardous materials code because it is less costly and safer.

Indeed, the group of technical people working on NFPA 400 represented a convergence of hazardous material interests ranging from the environmental and fire safety enforcement communities to entities such as The Chlorine Institute, Inc., The Fertilizer Institute, and the American Chemistry Council. Fluer, who represented the Compressed Gas Association (CGA) on the committee, says the organization took on the task of developing NFPA 400 as a means of harmonizing requirements in conjunction with NFPA 1 and NFPA 5000®, Building Construction and Safety Code®.

Sometimes, Fluer says, the meetings became contentious. “At times we felt that compressed gases were under attack by some on the committee,” he recalls, “but in the end we were satisfied with where the document was positioned.”

In addition, James says, NFPA 400 represents a significant step in consolidating requirements for hazardous materials. “In the past, the fire code was used to regulate or enforce on a general basis, and there were references to many other documents,” he says. The process of consolidating documents provided opportunities to improve the language, especially with regard to protection features, he says. For example, James says in the past it wasn’t always clear when hazardous material should be isolated from other areas, or when early warning systems or sprinklers should be provided. “Some documents had specific requirements and thresholds and others did not,” he says. “In other words, there were holes in the past, and this document deals with them.”

Likewise, says James, in the past, some documents only dealt with subjects like manufacturing or bulk storage. If you were making pool chemicals, the documents you would reference would cover manufacturing and handling very large quantities, but they wouldn’t address selling activities or storage issues at a school or hotel. The comprehensiveness of the new document should help everyone, says James. “If you are a manufacturer you might intuitively provide protection, but the steps you use aren’t documented. Someone coming into the business might not have the same feel for the process. That’s why having the manufacturing officials and chemical engineers involved in developing NFPA 400 was important—it helped fill that void.