CS4: Summary Paper - BEA 347, Mexico CEE 424 - Sustainable Construction Methods
GROUP 2 - Laura Medina, Houhao Liang, Kamini Sumant Chavda, Ziwei Song May 11th, 2018
To have a better understanding on how LEED certifications would affect project de livery, a case study on project BEA 347 were conducted. This paper summarized the project details according to different phases.
Introduction BEA 347 is an office complex located in Monterrey, Mexico. It belongs to the company Bioconstrucción y Energía Alternativa which was established in 2001. This company wanted to be the pioneering Latin American company and leader in consulting for sustainable world-class real estate developments. Therefore, the main reason was to make a commitment to the environment by implementing their own product in their building. Designed by Oficina de Arquitectura (ODA) architectural firm and completed in 2010, the 4639 sq.ft office (BEA 347) is designed to be the headquarters for the LEED-pioneer consulting firm. Up to now, BEA has successfully led several LEED certification processes of many high-performance buildings in Latin America. Their goal is to transform our build environment by providing consultancy services in Green Building, Wellness, and LEED Certification. BEA 347 has two Platinum Certifications: New Construction v2.2 and O&M v4 (Figure 1). Certified as Platinum in 2011, BEA 347 is the first construction to reach LEED Platinum Certification for new constructions in Latin America. By obtaining 58 of the 69 points available in the v2.2 scale, BEA 347 is located within the top 1% of buildings that achieve this recognition. The second Platinum certification in 2015 (87/100) was mainly to perfectionate and improve on the sustainable practices that already exist in the building. BEA is the first doubly certified building LEED Platinum version v4 in the region of Latin America.
Figure 1. LEED Certification in 2011 and 2015
Decision LEED certifications are not new to the company Bioconstrucción y Energía Alternativa. As a green building design company, they have finished a lot consulting projects over these years. But, this time the project is their office complex.
As the project team believed, being leaders and pioneers in the area of sustainable design, applying the groundbreaking concepts and strategies is always their goal. Their office building will not be an exception in being Green. However, what makes this project so different is that they are putting the occupants comfort in the first place instead of any of their key performance indicators. They believed that, by following the LEED guidance, they can greatly improve their working spaces and further improve their workers’ comfort and enhance the company’s
productivity. It’s just as what they said, ‘we knew it would pose a large challenge, but we also realized it would have a direct impact on our company, collaborators, employees and visitors’.
Design To comply with LEED requirements, BEA 347 focused on integrating strategies for reuse of construction material, high performance glazing, water reuse with treatment plant and pluvial catchment, achieving not only "reuse" the property but recycling almost 100% of the products that make up the workplace. During their certification process for New Construction, BEA’s main objectives where:
● Materials that could be reused. ● Paints with low content of organic compounds. volatile, which were achieved within the limits allowed by the scale. These two tasks were challenging since their availability in Mexico was limited. To achieve the LEED certification, BEA focused on and implemented a series of elements that could comply with each category:
Water Efficiency ●
Use rainwater to satisfy the consumption of sanitary appliances and irrigation systems.
●
Reduction of the external water consumption by the use of alternative sources of water.
●
Permanent metering of 4 sub-systems.
Sustainable Sites ●
Rainwater harvesting system, composed by two tanks (capacity of 75 gallons each
one) which has a filter to eliminate the suspended solids connected to a pipe network which takes the rainwater to other tank that distributes the water to all the building. ●
Permeable area higher than 50% of the total surface area to manage the runoff water on site.
●
Use of special protection for exterior illumination that exceed 2500 lumens to avoid external light contamination.
●
Use of only electrical equipment for most tasks in the building.
Energy & Atmosphere ●
Use of photovoltaic panels, solar heater and wind turbine.
Materials & Resources ●
Luminaires in the building with minimum amount of mercury.
●
Material and fortuniture that would be used must have sustainable criteria.
●
Recycling plan for consumables during construction and operation phases.
Indoor Environmental Quality ●
HVAC system.
●
Green Cleaning Policy in the building.
●
Comprehensive control of pests plan in the building and outdoors.
●
The BEA project has workstations designed to increase employees' comfort and protect their physical health. By using ergonomic furniture and careful planning, the space allows team members to avoid strain and injury.
Location & Transportation 1 Alternative transportation (racks for bicycles, carpooling and public transportation) Sustainable Sites 2 Rainwater System 3 Water Tank 4 “Heat Island” reduction 5 Green areas with native vegetation 6 Green Roof Water Efficiency 7 Meter for whole-building water consumption 8 Meter for irrigation system
9 Meter for hot water 10 Grey-water treatments for irrigation use 11 Meter for water consumption in sanitary equipment. 12 Low consume equipment (WaterSense, W.C., etc.) Energy & Atmosphere 13 General metering 14 Photovoltaic panels 15 Solar heaters 16 Wind turbines 17 HVAC 18 Isolation 19 Natural and autonomous lights 20 Commissioning (monitoring systems)
Material and Resources 21 Recycle area 22 Regional material (bamboo and wood) Indoor Environmental Quality 23 Good levels of illumination 24 Access mats to avoid indoor contamination 25 Areas with controlled illumination 26 Space free of tobacco 27 Smoking area Innovation & Design 28 Orchard 29 Site-Preservation Plan
Construction Once general studies about the area and the projected performance of the building were developed, other actions started to be considered such as an annual contribution to local agency for the conservation and renovation of green areas. As the saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail. The project team of BEA 347 believed planning is the key point of successfully getting a green certification. Meetings were always the most effective way to communicate and to make sure everything is in the plan. Besides, the company always provide sufficient ‘green training’ to their team members. All of the employees participated on the process to fit the building for their necessities and commodity. When it comes to the question of how did the team approach to the LEED certification, they highlighted the importance of communication again. In any multi-disciplinary process, during the construction, they encountered many obstacles when responsibilities began to crossover. However, with an well-trained and highly professional project team they was able to stay focused on their sustainable goal. Their rich experience in building high sustainability performance building helped them implement the integrative process better. This ensured that they only considered the best features and synergies from all team members' and stakeholders' perspectives. It is also important to mention that they believe that the great enthusiasm from all collaborators and employees helped in boosting the progress and encouraged the team to achieve the goal. To comply with one of their main goal, BEA used steel beams from a factory that was being decommissioned and met the characteristics required for the project. They also developed a 85.9 sq.ft. area for the production of food. Unfortunately, Mexico is a tough scenario when it comes to environmental consciousness. BEA
347 took this matter into hand and implemented innovative actions once the project was fully constructed. They have an educational program to give guided tours to visitors in the office, and they internally distribute a monthly bulletin to inform about the consumption and behavior of the building to engage occupants into improving energy saving actions.
Certification LEED Scorecard Analysis
The BEA 347 received 87 credits out of 110 possible credits and was awarded Platinum. Considering that the site and location of the BEA 347 was carefully chosen to maximize sustainability, they received 9 out of 10 SS credits.
Since Monterrey can reach temperatures about 105 ºF, BEA 347 lost 3 points on cooling tower water use to save cost and receive 9 out of 12 WE credits. To achieve this, rainwater use saves 76% of water consumption, satisfying the consumption of sanitary appliances and irrigation systems. And permanent metering of 4 sub-systems were installed in this building.
The project received 25 out of 38 possible points for Energy and Atmosphere credits. It has an energy performance 36.6% better than similar buildings, where 13% of the energy consumption of the building is supplied with renewable energy generated on site (photovoltaic panels, solar heater and wind turbine).
For Material and Resources credits, the project received 6/8 credits. For this, the project utilizes 61.05% of the ongoing consumable goods and 89.43% of the electrical equipment that complies with sustainable criteria. Luminaires in BEA 347 have minimum amount of mercury. 53.49% of the construction products and materials and 84.62% of furniture have sustainable characteristics as well. Another remarkable fact is that 92.14% of cleaning products and materials have sustainable criteria and 100% of the cleaning equipment meets sustainable requirements.
Finally, in the Indoor and Environmental Quality category, BEA 347 was successfully awarded 13 out of 17 credits. Levels of natural lighting of the building are between 300 and 3,000 lx for 51.33% of regularly occupied areas.
This project receives no credits in Integrative Process, which is due the cost and the complicated operations to achieve coordination all the needed systems.
BEA 347 has also a Well Building Standard certification.
Beyond the Certification The benefits of pursuing LEED is more than the certificate itself. As the project team told us, their employees and collaborators at Bioconstrucción y Energía Alternativa enjoy the work stations that are highly connected to the exterior which brings natural light and views to their activities. Flora and fauna – including pet turtles in one of the semi-exterior gardens – are brought to the working areas through physical and visual connections, lowering occupant stress levels. Well-being is also promoted through the use of standing desks and the implementation of several active policies that foster physical activity within and outside the working environment. One of the most remarkable things about this project was the collaborators’ availability to help in this project, even though they were not directly involved as part of the assigned team. The enthusiasm of all of their team helped make the new, healthier office a reality.
