LEED Roundup: Maple Leaf Foods, McQuay, Sodexo, Clorox, Plaza Diane, IBM, Merritt, FFKR Architects

by | Sep 24, 2010

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Here’s the latest roundup of some of the most recent businesses and office buildings that have earned the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. These include Maple Leaf Foods, McQuay, Sodexo, Clorox, Plaza Diane, IBM, Merritt Properties and FFKR Architects.

Here are highlights for each LEED certification project.

Maple Leaf Foods’ Corporate West offices and ThinkFOOD! Centre in Mississauga, Ontario, have been awarded the LEED Core and Shell (CS) Gold certification by the U.S., marking the second project to achieve this level in Ontario, reports the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce. LEED CS covers base building elements such as structure, envelope and the heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) system.

Sustainable features include a thermoplastic olefin (TPO) white roof to reduce the heat island effect, and low flow fixtures that result in greater than 40 percent water savings.

The overall energy performance is 36 percent better than a typical model building thanks to advanced HVAC systems with heat recovery and high efficiency boilers, demand control-based ventilation systems, advanced lighting controls and a design of less than 0.6 watts per square-foot for lighting. The company also is purchasing ‘green’ energy for base building loads.

Building materials were selected for high recycled and regional content, and low volatile organic compound (VOC) content. More than 75 percent of construction waste was diverted from landfill during construction.

Green management initiatives, such as green cleaning and recycling programs, that include organic waste, will divert more than 80 percent of ongoing waste from landfill.

The office renovation at McQuay International’s engineering wing of its Staunton, Va., facility has yielded LEED Silver certification. This is the first LEED Silver and second LEED certified project in the Central Shenandoah Valley, according to the company.

A big part of the green initiatives implemented at McQuay’s 9,320 ft² engineering facility focused on delivering a comfortable environment for employees, together with environmental stewardship. Some of those features include a new energy-efficient rooftop system that helped improve the indoor air quality.

McQuay used its own highly-efficient VAV rooftop system to reduce the energy used by the HVAC system in the engineering wing. The system uses a R-410A refrigerant, which has no ozone depletion potential and a low global warming potential compared to other non-HFC refrigerants.

To improve indoor air quality, CO2 sensors were installed. A demand control ventilation strategy monitors the CO2 sensor readings and the time-of-day building occupancy to provide outdoor air to the occupants when it’s needed to maintain good indoor air quality.

In addition, high-efficiency air filters (MERV 13) used in certain critical spaces also improve indoor air quality by removing dust and other pollutants and particles as small as those found in copier toner dust or paint pigment.

McQuay also reduced water consumption by more than 40 percent, reused more than 89 percent of the building’s original materials, used new construction materials with a high recycled content, and certified more than 50 percent of the wood used through the Forest Stewardship Council. The renovated facility also features a recycling program and commuter friendly parking for bicycles and low emission vehicles.

Sodexo’s North American headquarters at One Washington Center has earned both Platinum LEED for Existing Buildings (EB) and Energy Star certification. The building is one of three structures in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area to achieve the USGBC’s highest rating, according to the company. The other two buildings are the Discovery Communications headquarters building in Silver Spring, Md., and the International Financial Corporation headquarters in the District of Columbia.

The building, which is owned by LaSalle Investment Management and operated by Transwestern, with Sodexo North America as its anchor tenant, also earned the Energy Star Award for the fourth consecutive year, earning 94 out of a possible 100 points under the EPA rating program.

Sodexo and other tenants worked with Transwestern to lower energy use beyond what was called for in existing lease agreements, and under a separate agreement, tenants agreed to significantly reduce energy use by shutting down HVAC systems during all weekend hours. In addition, 19 percent of building tenants use alternative commuting transportation.

The Sodexo food service staff for Rio Café, the center’s onsite cafeteria and dining facility, has instituted a behind-the-counter food waste collection process to reduce “wet waste.”

The building initially achieved a LEED Certified rating in February 2009 under Transwestern’s portfolio program. The project pursued recertification and attained its current LEED-EB Platinum rating.

Sodexo’s Better Tomorrow Plan details commitments to reducing carbon, water, and waste at all of the sites where it operates, and maintains a core of 200 sustainability subject matter experts to support its business partners.

The Clorox Company’s corporate headquarters is now one of 38 buildings in the U.S. to achieve Platinum LEED-EB certification, and is considered one of the oldest buildings to achieve this certification level. The headquarters building also accommodates several retail establishments and other tenants.

To achieve LEED-EB Platinum certification, Clorox’s global real estate team focused on five key areas of building improvements: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.

These improvements include replacing every toilet and plumbing fixture in the building to reduce water consumption by more than 40 percent and 1.5 million gallons annually, replacing more than 1,700 lamps to more efficient lighting, and installing a new white reflective roof that keeps the building temperature cooler.

The project also included several efficiency improvements to the building’s heating, cooling and ventilation systems. Other improvements include a shift to non-potable water for all irrigation, expanded solid waste recycling and implementation of a composting program.

Plaza Diane earned LEED Gold certification, becoming Park County’s first LEED certified building and one of 10 in Wyoming, joining the recently-completed Old Faithful Visitor Education Center in Yellowstone and Washakie Museum and Cultural Center in Worland, reports Powell Tribune.

The project called for the renovation of the existing building, a World War II-era filling station, which reused or recycled more than 90 percent of the material.

Green building features, cited in the article, include an automated weather station controller and drip-irrigation system to cut water use in half, a dual-flush toilet and low-flow aerators that conserve more than 30 percent of the potable water in the building, insulation for exterior walls, insulating windows that provide natural daylight and a programmable thermostat.

The project also includes photovoltaic solar panels on the stage canopy, which generates enough electricity to offset two-thirds of the facility’s electricity use and provide savings of more than $500 per year on utility bills.

In addition, new construction materials used for the building and overall site contain an average of 30 percent recycled content, and 32 percent of the new materials came from within 500 miles of Powell.

The total combined energy conservation and generation measures are expected to provide 46 percent annual cost savings, reports Powell Tribune.

IBM has received LEED Gold certification for its data center located at the company’s Research Triangle Park (RTP) campus. The new facility, which is the company’s most technologically advanced green data center, officially opened in February 2010 and is IBM’s first LEED Gold certified data center.

A key factor in IBM’s LEED recognition was the company’s re-use of an existing building on its RTP campus. The construction reused 95 percent of the original building’s shell, recycled 90 percent of the materials from the original building and ensured 25 percent of newly purchased material came from recycled products. These factors helped reduce the carbon footprint associated with the 100,000-square-feet building by nearly 50 percent, says IBM.

Key features of the IBM facility include a rainwater collection system that generates non-potable water to be used in the facility, a reflective roof to reduce the indoor temperature and cooling technology, which uses outside air to free-cool the data center for nearly half the year.

This system is complemented with an intelligent sensor network that continuously reads temperature and relative humidity throughout the data center, which IBM estimates will help reduce annual energy cost by 15 percent.

IBM also used a modular design method — called IBM Enterprise Modular Data Center (IBM EMDC) — that provides the ability to add significant future capacity in nearly half the time it would take traditional data centers to expand. The data center also uses advanced software virtualization technologies and CLOUD computing.

IBM says these factors make the RTP facility the most efficient of more than 400 data centers worldwide.

Office building 8840 Stanford Boulevard, in Columbia, Md., retrofitted by its owner Merritt Properties, has been certified LEED-EBOM Gold. The company already achieved an Energy Star rating of 80 for the building without renovations, using 40 percent less energy than similar buildings and releasing about 35 percent less carbon dioxide.

Eco-friendly initiatives include water-efficient restroom fixtures, HVAC retro-commissioning, weather-driven irrigation system with water-efficient sprinkler heads, low to no VOC materials for interior build-outs to reduce the possibility of indoor air pollutants, green housekeeping, and single-stream recycling dumpsters.

FFKR Architects has transformed a historic smelter factory into its headquarters building, achieving LEED Silver Certification in the process, reports Deseret News.

The building features natural day-lighting, high-performance air filtration, and solar panels that generate much of its electricity. The company also has implemented a ‘green’ cleaning products strategy.

FFKR also has a recycling program and buys only products with an overall recycled content of more than 40 percent.

Here’s a link to EL’s previous roundup of LEED buildings.

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