LEEDing the way

Johnson Controls makes it easy to green a building

In recent years, building owners and managers have begun a love affair with the color green—that is, embracing the greening (read: increasing sustainability and reducing environmental impact) of buildings. Both new construction and existing buildings have been the focus of these efforts.
To monitor, advise and certify the construction projects that help buildings enhance their “green profile,” the U.S. Green Building Council has created the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system. LEED® certification encourages the adoption of green building and development practices worldwide.
That encouragement has set up a cottage industry of sorts. According to Paul vonPaumgartten, director of Energy and Environmental Affairs for Johnson Controls, 40,000 LEED-accredited professionals are doing business today, and there are 8,000 registered projects and 2,000 LEED-certified buildings. And leading the way among all those professionals and projects is—Johnson Controls.
“When a client says they want a green building, they’re asking for everything Johnson Controls sells and delivers,” vonPaumgartten says. “In other words, what we do every day is what makes a building green.”
The Metasys building automation system, for example, which controls HVAC systems, addresses a key category for LEED certification: indoor environmental quality.
According to vonPaumgartten, more municipalities are considering LEED certification for their buildings, and 24 cities have declared that LEED certification will be the standard for new municipal building construction.

Certification Management

All that fervor for greener buildings and building practices has led to a need to manage LEED certification. To that end, Johnson Controls has developed Green Compass, a software solution that takes users step-by-step through the green building process.
The software uses a proprietary questionnaire tool to assess the green potential of a construction project. Based on the answers to a series of questions, the software automatically scores the proposed project against current green building standards. That gives users a sense of the undertaking before construction even begins.
And the software also provides potential return-on-investment financials for the project, detailing cost savings and revenue-saving streams.
The software helps manage all aspects of green construction projects, organizing tasks and developing workflows for the project. As part of the software’s capabilities, electronic work schedules can be disseminated to all project members, augmenting communication streams and keeping disparate members on the same page. These schedules also act as a documentation repository for the necessary paperwork required for certification.
Best yet, the software then takes the repository and repurposes it for LEED certification, creating the entire LEED application for submission to the U.S. Green Building Council.
And that makes being green easy indeed.