The 372,000-sf, $119-million Public Health Sciences Building, which was occupied in March 2004, represents the fifth phase of construction at the 14-acre campus to consolidate its research. The campus contains 1.3 million sf of office, laboratory, and clinical space, with enough land for another 1.2 million sf of future expansion.

The Public Health Sciences Building contains basic science laboratories, clinics for large population studies, and more than 800 individual offices for population scientists, biostatisticians, epidemiologists, and cancer prevention researchers.

"We had over 800 scientists going in here, and they insisted on being together in one building," says Guy Ott, who retired this year as the Cancer Center's vice president of facilities and operations and chief real estate officer. "We had zoning height issues which limited square footage to get our scientists to fit into this building, so we ended up with 60,000-sf floorplates in the Public Health Sciences Building.

"With over 800 private offices, you can imagine the difficulty in getting natural light into these inner spaces," he continues. "The only way we could bring natural light into the center of these spaces, and reduce the scale, was by putting in a huge atrium."

The building makes use of ample daylight harvesting and relights, and prevents occupants from pulling their blinds to completely close out the relights.

The use of natural lighting is only one feature of the building that will help it earn status as a LEED™-certified building. The U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System is a voluntary, national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings, according to the organization's mission statement. The project is currently under review by the U.S. Green Building Council to determine what rating the building will earn.

"We have always pursued environmentally conscious designs in all of our buildings because it's the right thing to do, and it saves money in the long term," explains Ott, "but we were halfway through construction of this phase before I decided to go for a LEED certification."

Seeking LEED certification allows developers to compare their project with others, and establish benchmarks for success, explains Johanna Brickman, environmental coordinator for Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, the architects for the Public Health Sciences Building. It also offers third-party verification of an institution's claim that it has constructed a "green" building, she says.

LEED certifications are awarded on a scale of "certified," meeting the minimum number of points in five defined areas, to "platinum," scoring the maximum amount of points possible.

"This building qualifies for the basic LEED certification," says Ott. "We did not spend much of a premium to achieve it."

Sustainability Savings

It is unusual to decide to pursue LEED certification so late in the building process, Ott says, and it required the contractor, Turner Construction, to go back into its records and document the way it had handled waste and building materials. Turner found that 82 percent of the waste from the site was diverted from landfills to be recycled or salvaged; 21 percent of the products used in the building were made of recycled content materials; and 51 percent of the materials were manufactured locally.

The most significant consequence of deciding so late to pursue LEED certification was an $80,000 design change which was required in order to recapture groundwater and use it for landscaping irrigation. The Public Health Sciences Building is situated below the water table of a nearby lake, and a lot of groundwater passes through the site. The initial design called for collecting the water with under-slab drainage and perimeter foundations, and pumping it out into the storm water drains. That system remains in place to handle most of the excess groundwater, but with one alteration: A special pumping and filtering system now pumps enough water from the collection sumps for all of the irrigation on this phase. Future plans include irrigating the entire 14-acre campus from this system, saving millions of gallons of costly city water.

There are no figures yet showing how much money that $80,000 investment will save over time, because the building was so recently occupied.

The savings from other features is easier to track. For example, all bathrooms and offices, which account for most of the square footage of the building, are equipped with occupancy sensors that operate the lights. Those sensors will save $4,680 a year.

Occupancy sensors also are installed in all high-occupancy spaces, such as auditoriums and conference rooms. Those sensors measure the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, which indicates the number of people in the room at a given time. The HVAC system adjusts for the number of people present, increasing the amount of fresh air when the room is full and decreasing as it empties. That feature will save $50,000 a year. The local power company, Seattle City Light, gave the Cancer Center a one-time $108,000 incentive for employing that energy-saving strategy.

Similar sensors in the garage gauge the number of vehicles by measuring the level of carbon monoxide in the air, then modulate the variable-speed drives on the exhaust system. That feature will save $8,380 a year.

The labs are equipped with variable geometry exhaust dampers that change shape rather than increasing fan pressure to regulate the amount of exhaust depending on the number of fume hoods operating at the time. The change in the damper is similar to the way a person's mouth changes when he purses his lips to blow out a candle. This allows the exhaust plume to maintain velocity without requiring a constant fan pressure. The dampers will save $5,250 a year.

Conventional fume hood exhaust systems "typically are designed for labs operating at full capaicity, even if only one out of 10 fume hoods is being used," says Brickman.

In addition, high-efficiency chillers in the HVAC will save $20,700 a year. Even something as small as installing LED exit signs will save $3,290 a year in electricity.

Transportation Management Plan

The Public Health Sciences Building is designed to encourage its occupants to be as environmentally conscious as the building itself, partly by constructing only 447 parking spaces for 800 employees. Planners at the Cancer Center are committed to discouraging employees from driving alone to work, inspired at first by their personal commitment to environmentally conscious development and later by a new state mandate called the "Commute Trip Reduction Act."

In the early days of the Cancer Center campus, 80 percent of employees came to work in single-occupancy vehicles. The program has evolved to the point that nearly 60 percent of the employees of the Public Health Sciences Building find another way to get to work, spurred by incentives the Cancer Center aggressively promotes, says Shelly DaRonche, transportation manager.

The Cancer Center negotiates an annual contract with local and regional transit agencies to offer all eligible employees a half-priced "Hutch Pass," which costs only $9 a month and is good for all regional and local buses, commuter rails, and a water taxi between West Seattle and Seattle. The Cancer Center also provides a subsidy for ferry passes of up to $60 per month. The Cancer Center also operates its own shuttle service between its campus and the University of Washington.

To entice employees to bike to work, the Cancer Center provides fenced, locked parking areas for bicycles in the parking garage, and shower rooms, lockers, and free towel service for the cyclists. The same amenities are available for people who jog to work.

Seattle is a very bicycle-friendly city, Ott explains, and the weather co-operates with moderate heat in the summer, very few heavy rain storms, and almost no snow in the winter. All regional buses are equipped with bike racks.

At least twice a year, the Cancer Center runs a transportation fair to promote the benefits of alternative transportation, and stations with transportation information are permanently located in each building.

"The fair, with information about alternate commute modes, is an opportunity for employees to re-evaluate their commute options," says DaRonche.

The promotion seems to be paying off. Of 2,800 employees on the campus, between 200 and 300 employees ride bicycles to work, says DaRonche. About 980 hold Hutch Passes, 67 have ferry passes, 30 people ride in a van pool.

Those who do drive to work must pay $65 a month for a parking space, but if they carpool, the cost drops to $35, which is shared between the occupants.

The Cancer Center even takes into account the concerns people might have about being stuck at work without a car: The Center offers all employees who commute by alternate modes a "Home Free Guarantee," which is a free cab ride home in the case of an emergency, as many as eight times a year. Employees also get cut-rate memberships in the regional "Flex Car" program, which offers its members occasional use of a car for a special circumstance when they typically do not require one.

Going Green

Ott says it is important for developers to create sustainable designs even if they do not pursue LEED certification, and to consider converting traditionally designed structures into greener buildings. All the sustainable features in the Public Health Sciences Building, for example, could be easily retrofitted into an existing structure except the high-efficiency chillers and the recaptured groundwater.

"I think it's time in our country for people to realize that with a little extra work and very little extra money, we can [build] in a more environmentally responsible way," he says. "The LEED certification does require a lot of work in record-keeping, and it's work busy people would rather not do."

Even the exercise of record-keeping is valuable, counters Brickman.

"In some ways, it changes the scope of your work as an architect to include things like waste management," she says. "That's good because architects are broadened by that. Their eyes are opened to the impact their work is creating. This is a sea change in what it means to be an architect."

By Lisa Wesel

We welcome your Questions and Comments

Copyright 2008 Tradeline Inc.
All Rights Reserved
ISSN: 1096-4894