I recently had coffee with an Insurance Agent discussing risks and issues surrounding Green Building and LEED.

While I have no problems with either I have said I choose not be to be a LEED AP or do any third party verifications for any organization or group offering such credentials to a building.

My reasons were liability, redundancy between programs (how do you know which is best), unnecessary I believe in residential housing as it offers no tax breaks only additional costs and more importantly if you are building correctly and with energy efficiency and sustainability in mind you don’t need the silly plaque on the wall.. just do it. And finally I am not an employee or associate of the USGBC, NAHB, MBA, EEBA, the Lung Association, Energy Star etc so unless they want to hire me to promote their programs and share the indemnity associated with certifications I choose to not PAY them for the privilege.. I will however pay for your resources, education and training and share that with my clients as needed.

I found this article today in Goddard Construction Magazine and it explains the risks that anyone looking to build and certify green what you need to consider prior to taking that project on. I don’t want to discourage anyone from building green but I would prefer building SMART over any acronym any day.

Home Environment & Compliance Risk Mitigation In Green Building
Risk Mitigation In Green Building

Written by Franz Wagner, P.E. and Jeff Myung, LEED AP

They say it’s always greener on the other side, but Green-built and LEED-certified projects can have you seeing red if owners and contractors do not take precautions to mitigate risk. While many executives in the construction industry initially perceived green building as a fad just a few short years ago, it is undeniably here for good.

Green building offers project stakeholders the allure of increased profitability, but to achieve optimum return on their investment, building owners and contractors need to mitigate the inherent risks associated with sustainable building. The first step to mitigating your risk is to understand how the risks emanating from Green building differ from those emanating from traditional building.
Risk Management in Site Selection

To obtain maximum Site Sustainability LEED credits, project owners often seek out locations that have been declared brownfield sites (abandoned or underused industrial and commercial facilities available for reuse) and also sites in close proximity to mass transportation, population density and accommodations for electric vehicles and bicyclists.

The development of brownfields may be complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination. The land is often contaminated by low concentrations of hazardous compounds such as lead, PCBs, mercury, hydrocarbons and asbestos. Additionally, such sites often pose unique pollution exposures created by working near subways, railroads and waterways. Because site selection is a key component in LEED certification, owners and developers need to evaluate the numerous insurance products available in the current marketplace to address environmental liabilities arising from these projects constructed on remediated properties. Various forms of coverage can be pursued to insure against existing and unknown pollution conditions as well as pollution conditions arising out of the construction work being performed. Each of these insurance products deserves consideration depending on the specifics of the work and the selected project site.

Loss Control Considerations

The stringent LEED credit system offers designers and contractors the guidance they need to produce a sustainable facility, but with those credits also come safety concerns that must be addressed in order to avoid costly insurance claims. The following outlines three loss control considerations that you should discuss with your insurance broker and safety consultant. By informing them of the green design elements planned for your project, your safety consultant can provide adequate training and equipment, and your broker can enhance your policies with the necessary coverage.

1. Material Reuse

LEED credits are offered for reuse of building materials, which often require some of the materials to be abated of lead paint in the case of reusing steel beams or exposed wooden beams, or stripped of hazardous compounds such as mercury in the case of reused electrical devices. At The Graham Company, our safety consultants advise site managers and contractors on best practices and the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) and the Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) standards for protecting employees during this phase of construction.

2. Vegetative Roofing

Vegetative roofs are an ideal way to maximize LEED credits for reducing heat island effects, using maximum green space and capturing and reusing rain water. However, vegetative roofs also present a unique condition for worker-fall protection during construction. The lack of exposed concrete and steel on a rooftop creates new challenges in providing construction workers with fall-arrest anchor points, as well as falling-object protection for those below.

3. Indoor Air Quality Control

During the final phases of construction and just prior to occupancy, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors’ National Association (SMACNA) place minimum expectations for continuous air exchanges. This challenge creates new demands of ventilation during final construction activities, such as painting, drywall and plastering, floor and carpet installation and waterproofing. While such activities may not have posed concern under traditional building conditions, the progressive LEED requirements for ventilation may now present you with a new series of occupational health concerns.

4. Update Your Insurance Program

Brokers who understand the risks associated with LEED construction are better equipped to structure the insurance coverages for these projects. For example, Builders Risk Policies do not automatically cover some of the unique aspects of a LEED project, such as the loss of earnings from an inability to achieve energy credits or sell off surplus energy due to a loss, or the additional soft costs associated with rebuilding to LEED standards. Keeping your broker informed on the extent of these projects will result in a more comprehensive insurance program to address these LEED-specific exposures.

Related Articles

• Green Architecture: What makes a Structure a “Living Building”? (scientificamerican.com)
• USGBC Tackles Building Performance Head On (prweb.com)

Sunday the Extreme Makeover‘s army of volunteers will begin construction on the 3,300 sq ft monster in Hattiesburg, MS. This will be the 167th home built by the ABC Makeover crews. My part? As the home’s green building verifier I’ll be traveling to the “Hub City” at 3:30 or 4:00 a.m. (I should have my head examined) on Monday the 7^th for the faming inspection and thermal bypass checklist…(now that should be the news story…that someone was able to get my butt out-a-bed that early for work…)    ..    then midday Monday I’ll be back here in Jackson to work with the judges in the Growing a Greener Mississippi green building contest. They’ll look at 3 homes…Scott Shoemaker’s place and Randy Berg’s two houses.  Silver Level – all three of’um.

Remember the first place builder in the contest gets 50,000 green backs. Second and third ain’t chump-change…30,000 and 20,000 respectively.

Tuesday we’re off to Oxford and Starkville. One Silver and one Gold. Wednesday we cruse down south Mississippi to Biloxi and Gulfport, again one Silver and one Gold Level to judge. Before the day’s end I’ll visit Hattiesburg again for a final inspection at the Makeover home. I’m sure I’ll be “extremely” tired by then…

Pervious concrete allows water to flow through thereby slowing down the water run-off rate.

Pervious concrete can take in storm water at a rate of 3 to 5 gallons per minute per square foot of surface area. That exceeds the flow rate needed to prevent runoff in most rain events. The rainwater may be stored in a coarse gravel layer underneath the pavement or allowed to percolate into the underlying soil. Because the pavement itself acts as a retention area, it helps to prevent much of the polluted runoff that normally occurs with impervious pavements.

Can it get stopped up? It’s unlikely that a pervious surface will become totally clogged. Reducing erosion and sediment runoff onto the pavement through good design can eliminate most problems. If any voids do become clogged, vacuuming or pressure washing of the pavement can restore most of the permeability.

What are the limitations? While this thirsty pavement is an excellent option for certain situations, it may not always be a viable choice. Because pervious concrete has a rough-textured, honeycombed surface, moderate amounts of surface raveling are normal. This can be a problem on heavily traveled roadways.

Special attention must also be given to the overall design of the pavement system in order for pervious concrete to perform as intended. Proper engineering of the substrate beneath the pavement is essential, since it must be able to temporarily store the water while it percolates into the soil. An initial soils site survey and site-specific stormwater calculations should be performed by a stormwater management engineer.

Installation: Pervious concrete is delivered to the jobsite by conventional ready-mix trucks and placed within

A heavy roller press is used to place pervious concrete.

standard forms. Because pervious concrete is thicker in consistency than regular concrete, a vibrating mechanical screed is used to level it off. Vibration is followed by compaction with a heavy steel roller to attain greater strength.

Because pervious concrete has a low water content, curing is especially critical. After placement, the concrete is misted with water and then covered with plastic sheeting and kept damp for at least 7 days to allow full hydration of the cement.

Often paving crews can complete pervious concrete jobs faster than when installing regular concrete. That’s because pervious concrete doesn’t need to be worked with a bull float or trowel, since these finishing operations can seal off the pavement surface and decrease water penetration.

More:

Ten Strategies for Ensuring a Successful Pervious Concrete Installation

Pervious concrete design ideas

Sources:

www.concretenetwork.com

http://porterworks.com/

Points: 7

Documentation Needed:

Site plan showing that no environmentally sensitive areas are present or impacted. An environmentally sensitive
area is

• any area within wetlands as defined by federal, state, or local regulations
• area of steep slopes
• “Prime Farmland” as defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
• areas of “critical habitat” for any federal or state threatened or endangered species.

How to Verify

Verify that the documentation shows no sensitive area or if any a sensitive area is present on the site that the sensitive area is not impacted by the development/construction.

[[Eco-footprints are only a part of sustainability]]

Expect to see this number a lot in energy discussions over the next few years: 2.5 cents/kWh. It is the average cost of energy efficiency, a figure pegged this week in a new report by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. http://www.aceee.org/press/u092pr.htm.

This number is big news because it is so small.  As a resource, energy efficiency beats out all conventional power sources on price.  (See chart below.) Moreover, it’s a price that has been dropping. Five years ago energy efficiency cost 3 cents/kWh.

But just because something is cheap, doesn’t mean people will buy it. How much energy efficiency will make it into the nation’s energy shopping cart?

Efficiency boomed in the early 1990s, but then busted later in the decade when deregulation allowed many utilities to shed their efficiency programs. It is resurging now, part of push by state and federal policy makers to green and ‘smarten’ energy supply.

Most utilities do not make money on efficiency, and this is part of the reason it busted in the late 1990s. Perhaps as important, efficiency’s branding was off. It was seen as an extra, a nicety to pursue out of goodwill when a utility or state had some extra money.

ACEEE and other efficiency advocates are trying to reshape the image. They refer to efficiency as a fuel – just like wind, sun, coal, natural gas, oil. And they want efficiency to be the ‘first fuel.’ This means that when a utility is planning its energy supply, it first applies as much efficiency as is cost effective and plausible, before it builds more expensive new power. Some eastern states are already using this planning concept. In addition, many states have set specific energy efficiency goals, some very aggressive.

That is why ACEEE’s 2.5 cents/kWh becomes so important. It is a kind of marker against which other resources will find themselves competing more and more in policy planning.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of states are decoupling utility profits from kilowatthour sales or instituting other financial incentives that inspire utility support for efficiency.

Of course, our economy cannot prosper on efficiency alone, but many studies indicate we still have a lot of waste in the system.  So as an energy planner, if you were confronted with increased demand – and are not dealing with policy or system issues that require generation or transmission as a solution – which of these would you pursue first?

Credit: Cost figures from ACEEE, “Saving Energy Cost Effectively: A National Review of the Cost of Energy Saved through  Utility Sector Energy Efficiency Programs,”  September 2009, http://www.aceee.org/press/u092pr.htm.

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Lisa Cohn of Energy Efficiency Markets interviews Ujjwal Bhattacharjee, a principal consultant with PA Consulting Group who specializes in renewable energy and energy efficiency. He evaluates energy efficiency in Massachusetts green buildings from 2004 – 2007.