Westway Park, a 150-acre office park located just off Beltway 8 in west Houston, will soon be home to Houston’s newest green building. Construction of the 150,000 square-foot, 3-story office building is slated for late summer. Dallas based Koll Development Company plans to construct six such buildings known as “Intellicenters” by year’s end.

The first of the centers is being built in Atlanta and will serve as a model for those to follow. Each Intellicenter will have to be slightly modified to conform to certain regional and site specific details, but they will otherwise retain nearly all the same features. Koll aims to have all its buildings qualify for LEED certification. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is a green building certification program administered by the USGBC (United States Green Building Council).

Green buildings employ resources including water, energy, building materials and land more efficiently than average buildings built simply to code. They also feature, among other things, more natural light and improved indoor air quality, which leads to better employee health, comfort and productivity.

Traditionally those in the building industry have concentrated on the up-front costs of building structures, with little or no regard for the costs down the line. In Cool Companies, Joseph J. Romm, former acting assistant secretary of energy and CLEAN board member, states that, “almost everyone involved in building construction- such as the developer, architects, and engineers- is rewarded by their ability to minimize the initial cost of a building, as opposed to its life-cycle costs-” costs incurred over the lifetime of a building. The average green building is built at a premium of about 2 percent, but its energy savings generally pay back the initial higher investment within several years.

Life-cycle costs are broken down into three main categories: the initial cost, operation and maintenance and “people costs”. The initial cost includes the purchase of land and construction of a building and, on average, represents about 2 percent of the life-cycle cost of a building. Operation and maintenance refers to the energy and maintenance costs incurred and accounts for about 6 percent of the life-cycle cost. An average of 92 percent of a building’s life-cycle cost is attributed to “people costs” which consists of employee salaries and benefits. In other words, the average building has energy costs ranging from $1.50-$2.50 per square foot, whereas salaries exceed $200 per square foot. “That’s why,” Dr. Romm writes, “productivity savings dwarf energy savings.” To put it another way, Romm explains that reducing a building’s energy consumption by 50 percent usually yields savings of one dollar per square foot per year, while improving productivity by just 5 percent will produce more than ten dollars per square foot in new profits every year.

The very conditions that keep workers healthier, and make them more comfortable and productive also tend to save business and building owners money. Providing more natural light and views of the outside improves employee productivity and reduces the need for more lights inside the office. Furnishing the office with sufficient ventilation and clean indoor air, and using non-toxic, low-emitting materials for carpets, paints, adhesives and sealants results in a healthier better-performing workforce. Offering employees control over their own work environments by providing them with task lighting and the ability to manage temperature and air flow at individual workstations makes them more comfortable and more productive.

In the past, developers may have been discouraged from constructing more eco-friendly buildings because the entire structure, including the interior, was evaluated in the LEED certification process. Tenants couldn’t be depended upon to extend the energy efficient and environmentally friendly features into their workplace. The recent development of a new LEED rating system specifically geared towards speculative, multi-tenant buildings has made the construction of greener office buildings much more attractive to developers. The Intellicenters are actually pilot projects for this new LEED-CS (Core and Shell) rating system which only governs a structure’s shell and core.

The Intellicenter building design boasts a number of smart green features and creative design elements. Tours will be provided for the community to view all the green features that the Intellicenter has to offer. Starting off with its construction, managers have set a goal to use at least 10 percent recycled materials in the building’s construction. They have also set a target of acquiring at least 10 percent of the building materials regionally- that is, products that have been processed or manufactured either in Houston or nearby. This reduces the project’s total energy consumption, limiting the amount of the materials that will have to be shipped from far away. It also helps support the local economy. Instead of carting the construction waste off to a landfill, as is common practice, the Intellicenter team has arranged for 50 to 75 percent of the waste from their sites to be recycled.

Large, highly-efficient windows allow for 75 percent of the building to derive its light from the sun, also called daylighting. Highly efficient lights will be used in the main lobby and hallways. Low flow plumbing features will help the Intellicenter use 20 percent less water than that of a non-green building of the same size. The roof will contain a membrane known as a radiant heat barrier that reflects heat from the sun. The carpets will be made, in part, from recycled materials and will not give off toxins or chemical odors. The paints also will be low-emitting and non-toxic. Managers of the project also have called for all natural, non-toxic housekeeping materials to be used to clean the offices.

The Intellicenter features raised flooring, which allows for the building’s electrical wiring and air conditioning ducts to run underneath the office floors. The building will be pre-wired so that tenants need only plug into ground-level outlets for access to phone lines, internet or electricity. Rather than large air vents that deliver conditioned air from the ceilings, the Intellicenters allow individuals to adjust the air flow to suit their personal comforts at ground level. In a seated position most employees are just several feet from the air diffusers as opposed to 5 to 7 feet from traditional air conditioning units located in ceilings. As a result, the Intellicenters’ air handlers, pump out about 30 percent less conditioned air. In addition to the energy efficient features of the buildings and its components, managers of the project have opted to employ renewable, wind-derived energy for its electricity needs.

Designers have also taken care to be as environmentally responsible with the landscaping as they are with the design of the building. Trees will be planted among the parking spaces, creating a more pleasant setting while helping to reduce heat retention. Native vegetation will be planted to conserve water. Many office-building landscapes use non-native plant species to landscape their grounds. Many non-native plants are resource and maintenance intensive- requiring significantly more water, nutrients and overall care than their native counterparts.

The project developers hope that their future tenants will adopt green principles when building their individual spaces. Gensler Architects, a design firm involved with the project, plans to provide a manual with suggestions as to how tenants can green their offices. Recommendations will include using low VOC-emitting (volatile organic compounds) paints, building low walls or transparent glass partitions to allow for greater penetration of the daylighting, using ultra-efficient lighting components, and using recycled materials for the carpeting.

It is hoped that the creation of the new LEED-CS rating system, coupled with mounting interest from tenants and building owners for more energy efficient structures that provide healthier, more work-conducive environments will result in the construction of many more green office buildings in Houston in the years to come.