# Presentation: 727982

## How Sandia National Labs is Meeting the Sustainable Design Requirements of EO 13423

*How Sandia National Labs is ***Meeting the Sustainable Design Requirements of EO 13423**

**Jack Mizner, PE, LEED-AP**
**Erin Murphy, LEED-AP**
**Presented at the 2008 Federal Environmental Symposium**

- Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.

## Requirements of E.O. 13423

- By 2015:
- “Green”15% of capitol asset building stock to  meet High Performance Sustainable Building  Guiding Principles
- Reduce energy intensity by 30%
- Reduce water consumption by 16%
- Formalized in DOE O 430.2b

**Notes:**
Executive Order 13423 requires 15% of buildings must be green – which is measured by meeting the High Performance Sustainable Building Guiding Principles.

The order also requires a 30%  reduction in energy intensity by 2015
And  a 16% reduction in water consumption by 2015

The  DOE O 430.2b has gone further than requiring sites to meet the Guiding Principles, now all new construction must meet the LEED Gold standard.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and it is an internationally recognized third party certification that your building  meets criteria in categories including site, water, energy, materials and resources, and indoor air quality.

## Sustainable Designat Sandia to Date

**Sustainable Design****at Sandia to Date**

**Almost 10% of Sandia New Mexico’s square footage is or will be LEED certified**
**More LEED buildings than any other N.M. entity **
**6 LEED New Construction certified buildings**
**WETL, JCEL, CINT, MESA Fab, MESA MicroLab & WIF**
**2 LEED New Construction registered buildings (in design)**
** ****ESC and IBL**
**1 LEED Existing Building registered building**
**CA 929**

**Notes:**
Where is Sandia today?
Approximately 10% of Sandia’s square footage is LEED for New Construction Certified.
Sandia is leading the way in green buildings, with more  LEED certified buildings than any other entity in the city or the state .
This is notable because both the City of Albuquerque and the State of New Mexico have green building mandates.

As you can see Sandia has 6 LEED for New Construction buildings, 1-2 that are in design and one LEED for Existing Buildings project registered.  Sandia is also looking at projects that may be suitable to use the LEED for Commercial Interiors rating system.

## The Guiding Principles

- Five categories, fifteen principles, based on LEED
- Originally developed for New Construction
- Re-written for Existing Buildings
- No specifics (YET) for implementation or documentation
- Example: **Low-Emitting Materials**. Specify materials and products with low pollutant emissions, including adhesives, sealants, paints, carpet systems, and furnishings.

**Notes:**
The guiding principles are the green criteria that the EO specifies must be met- 
The GPs track closely with the LEED for NC rating system and 
They are not necessarily relevant to making an existing building green

HPSB Guiding Principles were developed and agreed upon by 19 federal agencies, represented as member of the Inter Agency Sustainability Working Group (ISWG).

There are five GP, consistent with the LEED rating system and within these five categories they address 15 different subjects, also similar to the LEED criteria.  The Guiding Principles reflect LEED and the Whole Building Design Guide.  Indeed they were extracted from these sources.  This subset is being “codified”, if you will into requirements for complying with E.O 13423 and DOE Order 430.2b.

They are high level requirements with no specific instructions for how compliance with the GPs should be documented,.  

## LEED for Existing Buildings

- Emphasis on Operations and Maintenance
- Rates building performance vs. design intent
- Period of Performance
- Must meet minimum energy performance to qualify
- Lends itself to a campus approach

**SNL/CA Building 929- LEED EB Registered**

**Notes:**
LEED EB is a rating system that was developed around improving the way a building is functioning.  Where LEED NC rates the design intent , LEED EB looks at the actual performance of a building.

Examples of credits in the  LEED EB rating system are using green chemicals for cleaning, and pest control in a facility.  You can get credit for monitoring parameters using a building automation system or for implementing an environmentally preferable purchasing program.

The period of performance is an important concept in the EB rating system because it is the timeframe when you capture the information on how your facility is running.

The facility must have fairly good energy performance in order to get a LEED EB score.  Many of the credits can be easily implemented on a campus-wide basis.

Because of the success that Sandia has had in implementing LEED-NC, it is our intention to continue to use LEED as our pathway to sustainable building and to certify as much of our existing building stock under LEED-EB, LEED-CI or LEED-NC, as appropriate.

## Slide 6

| LEED - EB | GUIDING PRINCIPLES |
| --- | --- |
| Prerequisites + flexible credit choice (Certified to Platinum levels) | Pass/Fail (must meet all or seek exemption) |
| Energy requirement – 69 points (Energy Star Portfolio Manager) | Energy requirement – based upon  30% reduction – 75 points (Energy Star Portfolio Manager) |
| Specific criteria, requirements, and templates to document credit compliance | In development – some map to LEED documentation; others don’t |
| Third party validation | Internal assessment and approval |

**Notes:**
At present, LEED can be used to meet the Guiding Principles in the following ways.  
 If a building is LEED certified  (EB or NC), prior to the 10/15/08 deadline, then that building is grand fathered in and  counts toward the 15% goal.
 If a (new) building has reached CD1 (Critical Decision 1) prior to the 10/15/08 date, there is no requirement to meet the GP.  If LEED certified, or above, then that building will count toward the 15% goal.  
 If  a (new) building has not yet achieved CD1 by 10/15/08, it must meet the GP and, for DOE, must be LEED Gold, which satisfies the GP. (This has not been accepted by the ISWG).

## Dual Compliance Paths?

- LEED EB O&M

- Guiding Principles

- ?

**Notes:**
The ISWG recognizes the validity of LEED; they have developed crosswalks for LEED-NC and LEED-EB with the GP. They have not, and, it seems, will not, designate a LEED equivalency to meet the GP.  Meeting all the GP  does not achieve LEED certification (??pts for NC; ??pts for EB).  Concerns expressed by the ISWG are:
LEED can be achieved without meeting all the GP. (True, however, some of the GP may be inappropriate to the region – moisture control plan in NM- of building – daylighting, or individual controls for existing buildings.  Further, the GP, really a subset of LEED, becomes prescriptive.)
 The government should not recommend a rating system or product.  (Agreed, but if a system is rigorous and meets or exceeds the intent,, it could be used.  LEED or Green Globes or BREAM could qualify)
 Meeting the GP promotes a higher level of performance than LEED, especially with energy. The ISWG is insistent that all buildings (used to meet the 15% goal) must also meet the 30% energy reduction (even though this goal is agency-wide and, even at a site level is an aggregated metric).  My opinion, the GP should be used when LEED cannot be met.
The ISWG has promised that if LEED is used, the developed crosswalks will make verification of GP compliance easy.  And, if one of the GPs cannot be (justifiably) be met, obtaining an exemption will also be straightforward.  Approval and verification will be required within each Agency, but the level of approval and the degree of documentation, is undetermined.
At a site level, this means proving the same (a high-performing, green building) thing twice using two similar, but different rule sets.

## Fiscal Year 2008 Sustainable Design Implementation Strategy

**Fiscal Year 2008 Sustainable Design Implementation Strategy**

- Continue Integrating SD into business process
- Building Prioritization
- “Portfolio” Approach
- Retro-commissioning procedure
- 1-2 buildings LEED EB certified in FY08

**Notes:**
The path forward for sustainable design at Sandia is to look at the existing building stock.

Because there is not much new construction anticipated in the next several years, we will focus our sustainable design efforts on existing buildings

We created an Implementation plan for FY08 that is primarily focused on existing buildings.

We  plan to continue to integrate SD into business processes,  prioritize buildings that are best suited for “greening” using a portfolio approach.  This will allow us to certify multiple buildings and minimize the paperwork

We  participated in the  Beta Testing of the Guiding Principles, which should help determine how to best implement the requirements of the new EO

We are also working closely with the Facilities Energy Management Team to develop a procedure for in-house retro commissioning 

Our goal is to have one- two buildings LEED EB certified

## Integration of Sustainable Design into Business Processes 

- Facilities Design Manual
- Construction Specifications
- 01350 LEED Requirements (SNL Master Spec)
- 01000S Spec, Design-Build specfication
- Incorporating Sustainable Design into:
- EMS
- Long Range Development Plan
- Ten Year Site Plan
- Master Landscaping Plan
- Campus Design Guidelines

**Notes:**
Many people have worked over the past seven or eight years to integrate sustainable design principles into construction documentation and the plans which guide all development on the site.  Our SD Implementation Plan calls for us to continue to work towards integrating SD into these guiding documents.

Already SD is reflected in the facilities design manual and over 40 construction specifications were “greened” to reflect the LEED NC criteria. 
Through the use of the LEED spec, and the other listed documents, all construction projects are required to do things like use green products with recycled content and low VOCs, or reflective roofing materials

SD has been incorporated into the site EMS, and the other plans that you see here

## Building Prioritization

**Building Prioritization**

**Criteria:**
- Gross square footage
- Age of building
- Type of building
- Availability of data
- Special considerations
- Customer support
***Approximately 14 GPP buildings needed to meet 15%***

**Notes:**
The first thing that we did was inventory the site and rate buildings for their compatibility with green criteria and the LEED for Existing Buildings rating system
GSF- Don’t want to work on buildings that are too small
Age- Buildings between 2-7 years old are most desirable, because buildings must be at least 2 yrs. Old to be rated under LEED EB. The LEED specs were developed in 2000, so buildings that are 7 yrs. Old and younger are designed with sustainable features
Building Type-This refers to the space type, which dictates to a large extent the energy intensity of a building.  The Energy Star Portfolio Manager, which is the tool that LEED EB uses to gauge a building’s energy use, can only be used to rate certain space types such as offices, retail, educational facilities etc. so we put buildings into 3 categories: Office, Office with light lab, Lab or high process energy use
Availability of Data refers to whether or not the building is metered and data is being collected.
Special considerations included factors that did not fall into the other categories. An example is buildings with good, water efficient landscaping were noted.
Finial, we rated the level of anticipated support from the building owner and the folks in the building.
Our approximate calculations show that we need to rate approximately 14 GPP buildings to meet the 15% goal (414,242 sf not counting buildings in design)

## Slide 11

## Portfolio Approach

- USGBC certification of “Institutional Credits”
- Every time a project is certified, these “Institutional Credits” apply
- Cut down on paper work and cost
- Current USGBC Portfolio requirement
- 25 buildings or 2 million SF
- Validate institutional credits every 3 years

**Notes:**
The concept here is to pick a number of buildings to be certified over a number of years and then to submit institutional or campus credits that will be applicable to every building.  
You can see the examples that I’ve listed here, the benefit to this approach is that it will cut down the amount of time, effort and cost required to certify a large number of buildings and ensure consistent performance throughout multiple buildings

## Institutional Credits

| Credits | # |
| --- | --- |
| Green Cleaning | 7 |
| Waste Management | 4 |
| Sustainable Purchasing | 5 |
| Alternative Transportation (25%) | 2 |
| Indoor & Outdoor Water Reduction | 3 |
| Miscellaneous (Building Exterior/Hardscape Mgmt., Open Space, Heat Island Reduction: Roof, Existing Building Commissioning, Performance Measurement, IAQ, LEED AP) | 7 |
| Total | 28 |
| 82% of credits needed to meet Certified Level |  |

## Retro Commissioning

- Work with Facilities Energy Management Team
- Create, test, and document a procedure for in-house retro commissioning
- Establish a retro commissioning building priority list
- Apply to LEED EB Energy and Commissioning prerequisites and credits

**Notes:**
By having an in-house commissioning procedure, we can tune up a larger number of buildings, achieving better performance and multiple credits under the LEED EB program
A retro-commissioning procedure will help meet the energy reduction goals as well as the green building certification goals set forth by the Executive Order

## Lessons Learned (so far...)

**Energy seems to be the key**
**Watch out for “but it’s a new building it should be operating fine...”**
**Occupant buy-in is essential**
**A team is preferable**
**building manager, maintenance engineers, custodial, procurement, architects, site planners, pollution prevention, energy management...**