Sustainability

The Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI) is participating in the second phase of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) growing involvement in the issue of sustainability. The Forum on Technical Opportunities for Sustainable Infrastructure, held at ASCE headquarters in Reston, Virginia on February 24, 2005, kicked off this second phase. All ASCE institutes, several technical divisions and other interested potential participants such as the EPA, NIST and NAE were represented at the Forum, coordinated by Dick Wright and Al Grant. This second phase follows up on the initial phase of work done by ASCE’s Committee on Sustainability of TAC (Technical Activities Committees) chaired by Al Grant. The phase addressed the scope of the issue of sustainability as it may involve ASCE in general in the Committee on Sustainability report entitled “Sustainable Engineering Practice – An Introduction” published in 2004 culminating two years of work by the committee.

The second phase effort is entitled “Practices, Education and Research for Sustainable Infrastructure (PERSI).” PERSI’s objective is to create an operational funded entity to address ASCE’s and other partners long term needs regarding practices, education and research in renewing and enhancing the sustainability of America’s infrastructure. One of the key elements of the meeting was a short summary by each participant of their point of view and overview of their respective areas of interest. Much of the remainder of the meeting was devoted to reviewing and validating an ambitious timetable for achieving various milestones in the implementation of an operational PERSI program which would include:

Establishment of Public/Private Partnerships by mid 2005,
Initiation of the Practice State of Art Study by late 2005,
Offering a National Workshop in mid 2006, and
Establishment of a National On-going Program by late 2007.

While the issue of sustainability is not new, clearly it is one of growing importance for several reasons. Perhaps the initial concern stems from consideration of mankind’s impact on its environment, in terms of its consumption of natural resources and the consequences of that consumption on the built infrastructure.

ASCE in general and the AEI in particular are in a unique position to play a meaningful role in the direction that civil engineers and allied professionals take in the design, construction and operation of many of the essential elements of the infrastructure. AE’s go beyond the initial construction project in that the constructed facility of whatever type needs to be maintained and operated for various periods of time in an efficient and sustainable fashion while it is either upgraded and/or replaced or completely demolished.

Clearly, the physical world is a big and complex place which is more or less spatially organized both naturally and artificially as a series of nested domains essentially beginning at the constructed component level to a complete integrated construction project. At each of these levels various technical interest groups including AE’s will play various supportive or lead roles in these ever expanding domains of interest.

Those in the AE profession will play a particularly significant role at all levels of development in the area of sustainability. AE’s have an advantage because they approach problems in their profession from a whole system integration oriented point of view. AE’s will also play a role in the area of high performing building facilities by virtue of the fact that buildings make up such a large percentage of the overall investment in the built environment. Buildings constitute somewhere between 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the money and effort in manpower expended.

The building sector has already received a lot of the attention in the area of sustainability through organizations such as the USGBC (US Green Building Council) and the use of its LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system. This attention is due to the prominent role of buildings in the overall system and the somewhat regular nature of buildings as a constructed facility objects. Currently, LEED is a voluntary certification program but many features of LEED are now being adopted by various public and private entities as the basis of more mandated approaches to the design of buildings. For instance, in California a program called the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) requires that new construction projects in schools meet a minimum score in a LEED-like rating scheme. In addition, various select municipalities in the country like Pleasanton, California, have established municipal ordinances that mandate certain minimum conformance to LEED ratings to buildings over a certain size. Although such ordinances do not require certification per se, certification does grant an applicant certain planning approval process benefits in by-passing some required procedural review steps.

Another example of the leadership role buildings play with regard to sustainability is BEES (Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability), developed by the National Institute of Standards (NIST). The regularity of building facilities have allowed rather detailed assessment of various building components and their respective performance impact on the general environment. Thus, even as the scope of the systems considered expands to ever higher levels of the whole global system, the impact of the lowest elements of a building facility within the context of the whole will need to be weighed relative to considerations made by other technical interest groups. The diverse input from ASCE’s various Institutes and Divisions will assure that the AE profession will continue to have a meaningful role in the process as it unfolds.