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Job Order Contracting Programs Allow Green, Sustainable Renovations To Take Root

By: Charlie Bowers & Vince Duobinis. “Article reprinted from The Center For Job Order Contracting Excellence, www.JOCexcellence.org”

The very nature of how a job order contracting program operates allows for green, sustainable efforts to come to life and reality at publicly-funded facilities, campuses and organizations.

Although publicly-funded facilities have focused on LEED certifications and sustainable practices for new construction projects, there exists a further reaching need. With the current number of existing and aging publicly-funded buildings and other infrastructures, it is time to focus on improving what we have today. Recently the USGBC has developed LEED guidelines for existing buildings, which has opened the doors for green strategies for repair, renovation and rehabilitation construction.

Through a job order contracting program focused on renovating, renewing and revitalizing existing facilities, we are extending the usable, serviceable life of buildings, bringing considerable benefits to the facility owner and the environment.

KEYS TO CRAFTING A GREEN AND SUSTAINABLE RENOVATION CONSTRUCTION STRATEGY

1. Design and implement a sustainable green renovation, remodeling and construction policy through clear specifications and communications to contractors and staff. Decide how green you want to be and what this means to your supporting construction efforts through both your internal and external resources.

2. Have in place a contracting method that allows collaboration, conversations and two-way thinking around green renovation efforts.

3. Establish goals and metrics to determine your success.

The contracting method and form are crucial to the successful ability to develop and implement a green renovation sustainability plan for a university, K-12 district, municipality or federal agency. At the core of sustainable green efforts is the need for collaboration between building owners, managers, construction providers, designers, etc. If these groups are unable to freely communicate, exchange ideas, change thinking and modify solutions as they work towards an end result, green efforts will be slow and marginalized.

Job order contracting is a method that allows for sustainable thinking, to look at all the shades of green, from a comprehensive program to simple steps in the right direction. A job order contracting program allows for an organization to decide what level of effort they want to apply - whether on a single project or across all projects impacting the whole program.

An example and a real “hot button” with members of the green world, especially institutional owners and the Department of Defense is the management of deconstruction waste and the ability to incorporate recycled materials into the construction process. Job order contracting allows for a focused or a general approach to this solution.

WHY JOB ORDER CONTRACTING IS WELL SUITED FOR GREEN INITIATIVES

Job order contracting is particularly well suited for sustainable building. JOC is a contracting method focused on construction services based on a contractor’s performance and ability to deliver results. This type of procurement creates a partnership relationship between an owner and contractor because potential barriers like profitability, schedule, scope and services are agreed to before construction begins. This includes a scope or focus of support around green initiatives.

Developing this kind of partnership is essential in any successful construction venture, but is particularly important when an owner is trying to incorporate sustainability goals into their project.

For example, upwards of 80 different categories and unique requirements need to be met in order for a project to achieve LEED Certification in schools. With such diverse areas as job site management, water efficiency, energy and atmospheric controls, materials, resources, indoor environmental quality, innovation and design process included within 80 different categories needing to be met to achieve some level of LEED certification, only true collaboration between an owner, designer and contractor can produce the kind of careful coordination, documentation, procurement and construction demanded for such specific requirements.

Critics of green buildings claim they are more expensive to build because of numerous standards involved, expensive construction materials and methodologies required. Job order contracting tends to focus on bringing the best value for the construction dollars, as opposed to typical design-bid-build projects, because it requires a lower overhead cost of construction procurement and delivery, helps reduce and eliminate the change order philosophy, and thus, reduces legal fees. Another key element is the ability to jointly scope projects, within a team environment, allowing the best thinking to come together before work is begun.

The scope is also developed to the budget, meaning there are no surprises at project completion. With JOC in particular, standard pricing and specification, utilizing a published unit price book (UPB), results in efficient and effective estimating, design and fixed price construction.

With JOC, the contractor becomes an extension of the owner’s team and the goals of the owner become those of the JOC contractor. A JOC program’s processes allow the owner/client to craft and direct at what level green and sustainable planning, development and execution should and can be applied to any project - from simple energy savings approaches (motion sensors on/off switches) to complete buildings.

WHAT IS SUSTAINABILITY?

In its broadest sense, sustainability is a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. In recent years, it has often been associated with the environment and the discussion of how long ecological systems can be expected to be productive. In the building industry, sustainability is most often used when referring to sustainable design, which is the practice of designing physical objects and the built environment to comply with the principles of economic, social and ecological sustainability. It is often referred to as “green design” or “green building.”

The five major components of sustainability are:

• energy efficiency

• water conservation

• indoor air and environmental quality

• quality, materials and construction

• site sustainability

We would also include:

• A contracting and work execution method that allows for improved collaboration, communications and rapid changes

• A cultural attitude shift towards green and sustainability impacting social, economic and environmental concerns (the triple bottom line).

The aim of sustainable design is to produce places, products and services in a way that reduces use of non-renewable resources, minimizes environmental impact, and relates people with the natural environment.

PRINCIPLES OF SUSTAINABLE DESIGN

While the practical application varies among disciplines, some common principles as described by the Green Building Council are as follows:

• Low-impact materials - Choosing nontoxic, sustainably-produced or recycled materials which require little energy to process.

• Energy efficiency - Using manufacturing processes and products which require less energy.

• Quality and durability - Longer-lasting and better-functioning products will have to be replaced less frequently, reducing the impacts of producing replacements.

• Design for reuse and recycling - Products, processes, and systems should be designed for performance in a commercial “afterlife”.

• Design Impact Measures - Measurements for total earth footprint and life cycle assessment for any resource use are increasingly required and available. Many are complex, but some give quick and accurate whole earth estimates of impacts.

• Sustainable Design Standards - These, along with project design guides are increasingly being made available and are originated by a wide array of private and industry organizations.

• Biomimicry - Redesigning industrial systems on biological lines ... enabling the constant reuse of materials in continuous closed cycles.

• Service substitution - Shifting the mode of consumption from personal ownership of products to provision of services which provide similar functions, e.g., from a private automobile to a car sharing service.

• Renewability - Using materials that come from nearby (local or bioregional), sustainably managed renewable sources that can be composted (or fed to livestock) when their usefulness has been exhausted.

• Healthy Buildings - Sustainable building design aims to create buildings that are not harmful to their occupants or to the larger environment. An important emphasis is on indoor environmental quality, especially indoor air quality.

JOB ORDER CONTRACTING ALLOWS FOR COST EFFECTIVE GREEN SOLUTIONS

Job order contracting allows for a holistic approach of expediting sustainability into an ongoing construction program. Basically, think of it as a tool or value-added process to meet guidelines and goals - rather than a tactical use.

Nothing gets “lost in translation” when working as a unified job order contracting team. Professional JOC programs allow for the integration of sustainable short term objectives to meet the long-term regeneration goals. As an integrated project delivery unifies and assists in a seamless and consistent delivery of design and engineering, so does job order contracting to the improvement (or enhancement) of the built environment, allowing the teams to apply LEED and sustainability standards (including self defined ones) to renovation, remodeling and repair.

A Job Order Contracting Program Allows For:

¸ Green sustainable efforts on renovation & repair work¸

¸ Cooperative, Collaborative development of solutions

¸ Fast response using best practices in sustainability

¸ Innovative green solutions, ideas and sharing

¸ Control on budgets and outcomes of green projects

¸ Driven by client desired level of green focus

¸ Jointly developed detailed green project scopes

¸ Ability to work with green experienced subcontractors

¸ Ability to use green building materials

¸ Green thinking on small, medium and larger projects

¸ Can focus on recyclable and reusable materials

¸ Can include energy efficiency and improvement efforts - from simple to more complicated

A JOC PROGRAM ALLOWS FOR GREEN SUBCONTRACTORS

When implementing green renovation strategies at any publicly-funded facility, it is important to tap into green knowledgeable and experienced subcontractors. The ability to install a green roof, or to trade out poor performing lighting and replace it with high efficiency, requires past performance and experience. A job order contracting program focused on green and sustainable renovation allows your professional JOC contractor to build a database and resource pool of subcontractors with the right backgrounds and abilities to execute the sustainable work.

Experience with green materials, sustainable practices in energy management are important elements of implementing a green project strategy.

INTERESTING GREEN TRENDS

At a recent conference on sustainability for Virginia universities, held at Virginia Tech, a larger national design and engineering firm carried out a study on the cost of “going green” when building a new building. After reviewing the past few years of work they have done, they were able to quantify the numbers. Green building practices run around $3.50 more per square foot on the construction side, while the operating side of the same building was generating a savings of $77 a square foot to operate.

LEED for Existing Buildings standards encourages facilities managers and building owners to broaden their horizons beyond energy savings. This is demonstrated in the LEED for existing buildings credit distribution within the standards, indoor environmental quality 28%, materials & resources 20%, energy & atmosphere 29%, sustainable site 17% and water efficiency 6%.

The fastest growing industry segments, as reviewed in Education Green Building Smart Market report, McGraw-Hill Construction Research 2007, are educational, government and institutional facilities, all with a greater than 50% green construction growth rate.

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