Pre-Design

Select an Energy/Sustainability Champion

This person should be explicitly accountable to the owner for achieving energy and environmental goals.

Lead: Owner

Select a multi-disciplinary design team with sustainable design experience

The design team should have explicit expertise and a track-record in sustainable design. The links on the right provide assiatnce on how to select a design team with such experience. The design team should at the outset itself include the commissioning service provider (CSP), preferably directly hired by owner.

Lead: Owner, Energy Champion

See the A/E selction checklist on pages 9-10 of this FEMP Resource Guide for Procuring A/E services

See attachment 2 in this Navy Policy document

Ensure that project budget allows for sustainable design consulting services

An investment in sustainable design consulting services or focused team research is essential to achieve an integrated design that would be cost-competitive with a standard design. The Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) guidelines estimate that for high-energy facilities such as laboratories, the investment in sustainable design consulting services should be between:

$0.45 - $0.35 per sf for buildings < 20000 sf;
$0.35 - $0.25 per sf for buildings between 20,000 and 100,000 sf; and
$0.25 - $0.15 per sf for buildings greater than 100,000 sf.

Best practices may dictate an even higher investment in consulting services.

Lead: Owner, Energy Champion

Establish sustainability goals (including energy use)

It is important to establish sustainability and energy use targets at the project's outset. The targets may be adjusted during the course of the project, but projects that set aggressive targets at the very beginning are more likely to succeed than those that do it during design development. Although goals and targets may be general at this stage, they should have “teeth” in that they should be measureable and verifiable. For example, obtaining a certain number of points on the Labs21 Environmental Performance Criteria (EPC) and/or the USGBC LEED™ rating system could be a goal. Make sure to identify certification and testing measures that will be used to ensure compliance.

Lead: Energy Champion, Architect, M/E/P engineer, CSP

Conduct a pre-design charrette to identify potential strategies

Hold a charrette with the multi-disciplinary design team before schematic design to identify candidate sustainable design strategies. Consider the list in the Strategies section of this manual. The energy and sustainable design consultants should provide preliminary analysis of performance benefits and costs of strategies. Clearly identify why each strategy is or is not a candidate.

Lead: Energy Champion, Architect, M/E/P engineers, EHS

Identify all governing and relevant standards and codes

Identify synergies and conflicts with candidate sustainable strategies.

Lead: Architect, M/E/P engineers, EHS