1.9 Sustainable Design and Development
Practicing the principles of
sustainable design in the planning, design, construction, and operation of
infrastructure and facilities is a smart business practice. Protecting our natural resources and reducing our impacts on the
natural environment is achievable when we create high-performance, healthy, energy efficient, and safe buildings.
The Integrated Design Process - Critical to the success of sustainable design and development is the commitment of the team to engage in the Integrated Design Process. To effect change in building design and operation, the project delivery process itself must become a collaborative effort to integrate design strategies among all disciplines and all players in the project delivery process. Integrated design demands a more inclusive team working together than is traditionally the case. Future building users and facility managers must be invited to join architects, engineers, and planners in developing the vision and goals for new facilities. For example, the team may desire a facility to be a zero energy building which produces more energy than it uses, to use less than 10% of total water used by the facility for plantings, and to be commissioned for repairs and maintenance for 5-10 years subsequent to turn over to the occupant. In order to achieve these types of goals, they need to be set early in the project and followed through. Appendix D, Sustainable Design,
outlines the sustainable design concept and its application to Army
projects. The measurement and verification of
sustainable actions are key to achieving the goals established for all
development. Fort Carson is currently using a sustainable rating tool
established by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), titled Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEEDTM).
LEED™ is a nationally recognized, voluntary rating system that has been endorsed
by the US Army LEED™ defines a threshold for green buildings
and introduces a tool to promote a whole building approach that encourages
and guides a collaborative, integrated design and construction process.
LEED™ is performance based, compatible with standard design
processes, self-evaluating, self-documenting, but not self-certifying. Certification is done solely by USGBC. The five primary LEED™ categories include: Sustainable
Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources,
Indoor Environmental Quality.
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Section 1 - Introduction |
