HP’s LEED strategy discussed
Hewlett-Packard employees are scheduled to start moving into the new facility in Conway next month. The building in The Meadows Office and Technology Park incorporates many features that are environmentally friendly.
April Ambrose of Viridian Sustainable Building Consultants worked with HP on meeting the criteria for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. She said, “HP has done a good job of implementing sustainable features in their design. They are attempting LEED certification.”
Chris Hood, a program manager for HP, said, “If you talk to our CEO, he’d tell you being green is good business. These days, it’s pretty important to be green from a PR perspective. People like doing business with companies who are respective of the environment, but that’s not actually why I think we do it.
“Sustainable design is actually good business. The advent of mobility across the workforce means a lot more people spend less time in the office (resulting in) more empty offices. We spend time designing to make sure performance is efficient. The greenest building you build is the one you don’t build. If you can continue to downsize the amount you operate in, that’s the best thing you can do for the environment. We put a lot of emphasis on that.”
Michelle Teague of Polk Stanley Wilcox in Little Rock is the Conway Development Corporation’s architect. She worked together on the project with Gensler, HP’s design architect. The CDC is leasing the building to HP.
“The CDC wanted to start building a more sustainable portfolio of buildings,” Teague said. “Part of bringing HP to Conway and building properties like they want to own involved pursuing LEED certification. We think pursuing LEED certification for this building is part of the Conway Development Corporation’s establishing a high standard of excellence for their buildings in Conway.”
Ambrose explained the features the building and site has and how they were achieved. Among the features:
• The site itself is not on farmland, not in a 100-year floodplain, not in the habitat of a species that is endangered or threatened, and not within 100 feet of wetlands, park lands or bodies of water, she said.
• The project makes use of water-efficient landscaping — plants that will not require irrigation after the first year. Measures were also put in place to reduce the quantity of runoff storm water from the site.
• A light-colored roof was chosen to prevent the “heat island” effect seen in cities, Ambrose said. When dark colored roofs and asphalt in large cities hold in heat and radiate it out, the heat can go up significantly in the city and even change weather patterns.
• To encourage alternate transportation, bicycle storage, changing rooms and showers are on site, and 70 spaces in the parking lot are set aside for low-emitting and fuel-efficient vehicles, Ambrose said.
Teague noted the project met the requirement of energy performance. The building performs at 16 percent less electricity than a code building, she said. The use of LED lighting had a major impact on the energy savings, she added. To conserve water, low-flow and automatic sensor fixtures were installed.
The glass in the building was chosen to block heat but allow visible light to penetrate deep into the building to reduce the amount of artificial lighting, Teague said. The majority of spaces also have views of the outdoors.
The project received points for using regional materials, she said. More than 20 percent of the material cost was extracted and manufactured within 500 miles of the project. The building also scored a credit for the use of rapidly renewable materials, those that have a growth life cycle of less than 10 years, Teague said. Waste management and recycling were also a factor. More than 50 percent of construction waste will be recycled instead of taken to a landfill, and materials with high recycled content were used in construction.
The project has a number of other environmentally friendly features.
Ambrose said it takes education to successfully construct a LEED certified project.
“It’s one thing to say I’m just going to meet the numbers. It’s another thing to say I’m trying to increase habitat for wildlife,” Ambrose said. “It’s one thing to understand the documentation. Another thing is the intent. Everyone needs to understand the environmental problems that have caused the system to correct these problems.”
Hood said, “We think very holistically — not just turning light bulbs off, but how can we reduce the footprint of our operations. What can we do to the inner workings of our buildings to be sure they’re as friendly to the environment as we can make them. We have been building green, but more importantly, if you look at any checklist of sustainable design, you will see that one of the major point scorers is the reuse of existing (structures). We have done a lot more of that than new construction, as we reuse the footprint, go in and reuse the existing and improve their performance, we take out materials that are not consistent with high performance.”
(Staff writer Rachel Parker Dickerson can be reached by e-mail at rachel.dickerson@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1277. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)
