The flagship building of the new master plan for the University System of Maryland’s Universities at Shady Grove campus has amassed enough LEED credits to achieve Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). It is the first building in the University System of Maryland to achieve Silver certification or above.

The new 192,000 gross square-foot academic building is slated for completion in June 2007 and has a trio of components — at three, four and five stories high — united by a linear concourse. The program includes 40 learning spaces ranging from 20 to 300 seats, 100 faculty offices, a learning resource center, a student dining facility that seats 300, a fitness center, student services, a computer lab and support services, and provisions for future wet-lab research space.

By implementing a rigorous design process, the project team has achieved ninety-three percent of the proposed sustainable design and engineering initiatives without exceeding the project’s $45 million construction budget.

A New Master Plan

In Fall 2000, the University System of Maryland established the Universities at Shady Grove (USG), a collaboration of eight University System of Maryland degree-granting institutions bringing top upper-level and graduate degree programs to a single campus in Montgomery County. USG subsequently formed relationships with organizations such as the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce and the Technology Council of Maryland.

The program’s success yielded an increase in enrollment, putting pressure on available land, infrastructure, parking area and program space on the Shady Grove campus. The original 1994 master plan had been developed using a suburban model, therefore buildings were relatively small in scale — of one or two stories in height — and dispersed over the campus with surface parking.

The owner commissioned Cannon Design to develop a new master plan for the 50-acre campus as a prelude to designing the new academic building. Based on an urban model, the new master plan doubles the existing density of the campus with larger, closely spaced buildings. It eliminates existing and future surface parking in favor of structured parking — enhancing sustainability by reducing total impermeable surface area and preserving forested land.

Keys to Sustainability

The design team maximized the sustainability of the new building by identifying the location and size of the site and positioning the building to ensure optimal solar orientation for its location in the northern hemisphere: maximum frontage facing south and north, and minimum frontage facing east and west. Facades are designed to control the apertures (windows) in each of the four elevations: vertical sunscreens on apertures facing east or west, and horizontal sunscreens in those facing south. Moreover, it is the organization of the building — the effective combination of solar orientation, floor-to-floor height and interior depth — that directly influences two major LEED categories: energy efficiency and daylighting.

The design team began with 15 organizational ideas for the building before arriving at the plan that is both functionally efficient and energy efficient. Although an organizational scheme based on a simple “box” might be the most functionally efficient, the building needs sufficient surface area to achieve the daylighting goal albeit in an energy-efficient manner. Integrated cost modeling enabled the team to reduce eight alternative organizational schemes to three feasible alternatives, and then to one, at the programming phase.

What is Integrated Cost Modeling?

It is important to understand the difference between energy modeling and cost modeling. Energy modeling focuses on optimizing the building’s mechanical and electrical systems to reduce lifecycle costs. Cost modeling is used to calculate the total cost of construction.

When both cost and energy modeling are integrated or performed in parallel, the design team is able to optimize both capital costs and energy savings. Performed as part of the design process at each phase — programming, schematics, design development, and at 50 percent completion of construction documents — and at increasing levels of complexity and detail, cost and energy modeling ensure that the project team makes the necessary course corrections in design and/or engineering to attain the goals of the project without exceeding the budget or schedule.

Not exceeding the budget or schedule is important on any project, but particularly so for a public institution where capital costs and operational costs are accounted for in two separate sections of the budget. Therefore, arguments that are typically used to justify increased capital costs of a sustainable building in terms of reduced lifecycle costs do not readily apply.

Of the ten major energy savings initiatives proposed by the design team, 93 percent have been/are being implemented in the facility at no additional cost. Through the use of sunscreens, improved glass, improved wall U value, improved roof U value, reduced lighting (watts per square foot) level, added daylight control in classrooms, VFD in chillers, and CO2 sensors, the design/engineering team projects a total net-energy cost savings of 29 percent.

Lessons Learned

While University System of Maryland’s original goal was LEED Silver certification, the design team amassed enough credits to achieve Gold certification. Control over site selection and orientation of the building are major factors in achieving this higher level of LEED certification. As the owner and project team progressed through the design process, they identified and initiated additional opportunities.

Most institutional clients hire a construction manager (CM) for projects of this scale, and USG was no exception. When an owner hires a CM, it is important to do so as early in the project development phase as possible to take advantage of the CM’s preconstruction services — in particular, cost modeling.

In addition, Cannon recommends that the owner hire an independent cost-modeling consultant. While it may seem redundant to pay three consultants for cost-modeling services, according to Cannon it is well worth the owner’s investment. The reasons are when the three estimates and interpretations are compared, the project team gains a better understanding of the scope of the project, the cost of each component, and is better able to reconcile these findings for the ultimate benefit of the owner.

The value of including LEED-accredited professionals on the project team also cannot be overstated as these individuals provided a constant accounting of the project’s credit status at every major project milestone.

While the use of integrated cost modeling is not a guarantee that a design team will meet or exceed the owner’s LEED certification goals without increasing capital costs, control over fundamental sustainable design issues — including site selection and building orientation — also are keys. An owner can potentially benefit greatly from this tool.