Green Building Services is merging with Canadian consulting and engineering firm RWDI.  Financial terms of the merger were not released, but GBS staff and services offered are expected to stay relatively the same.

“We are still Portland-based,” said Green Building Services Associate Regional Manager Elaine Aye. “This is going to provide us with new and exciting opportunities for growth.”

Aye and business partner Richard Manning plan to remain with the company. The merger has been in the works for more than a year.

She said the biggest change that GBS clients will notice is an expansion in services the company is able to provide, Aye said.

“When you are a 22-person firm, you can only do so much,” she said. “When you become part of a 400-person firm, there is a depth and breadth that you have that you didn’t before.”

RWDI will now be able to rely on climatologists to provide risk assessment of a client’s property or potential new property. The Canadian firm also comes with international experience. It has worked on projects such as the 58-story Comcast Center in Philadelphia, the 2,716-foot-tall Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai and the Grand Canyon Skywalk in Arizona.

Green Building Services adds to RWDI’s West Coast business presence.

“What was really sweet for us (is) they provide a lot of things,” Aye said. “They do acoustics. They do additional environmental services. They do daylight modeling. Our complement is on the back side. We can help guide clients through the long term. It’s a nice marriage of services.”

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Green developer Ryan Olsen has two projects now mired in city permitting. Both are what the president of Elemental Urban Living calls “micro villages” – mixed-use communities oriented around central courtyards that utilize rooftop space for trees and community gardens.

By taking a birds-eye view, Olsen had hoped to satisfy landscaping requirements and earn stormwater credits. But the city doesn’t offer such incentives in low-density residential neighborhoods, he learned; only in the high-density Central City.

“Why does this have to be a fight?” he said. “I mean, we’re pretty excited about this. It’s good for people. It’s good for the city. Why do we have to fight the city to do it?”

Olsen isn’t alone in his frustration. Business owners and building professionals say that thanks to red tape and disappearing incentives, other cities have caught up to Portland in terms of green building, a concept that it helped pioneer and still is a major part of its brand. Perhaps more incriminating is that they say now the city’s most sustainable projects are affordable only to its wealthiest residents.

“For a long time I think we’ve all benefited from each other’s great work in this area,” said Bob Packard, partner at ZGF Architects. “But what many of us who’ve been engaged in this practice are beginning to see and to talk about is, you can’t brag about something, you can’t point to something, that isn’t there.”

Oregon outside U.S. top 10

Portland builders have been on board to combat climate change since it was called “global warming” in the early 1990s. Green building (construction and land use practices that limit negative effects on the Earth) has informed many, if not most, prominent projects dating to that time, including Veridian Place (2000), the Mirabella condo tower (2007) in the South Waterfront District and the OHSU Center for Health & Healing (2007).

But the rest of the world has started catching up. Illinois now has the most Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design-rated buildings per capita. Oregon isn’t even in the top 10. Cities like Chicago, Washington D.C. and Salt Lake City have made significant strides in transit and planning. California’s CALGreen building code is nearly identical to the LEED code. Reno, home to Tesla and cheap housing, is said to be a particularly hot spot.

“The tech companies are swarming to that place,” said Steven Straus, president of Glumac, an MEP firm specializing in sustainable consulting.

Green building is today among America’s fastest growing industries, along with health care and legal marijuana. Glumac, with 10 offices on the West Coast, is quite busy these days, Straus said, though mostly outside the Portland area. The firm was able to establish and grow a solid reputation thanks in part to an Oregon program tying energy tax credits to the LEED rating system (the higher the LEED score, the more credits), he said. But that program has diminished, and become less effective, he added.

Glumac’s latest office is in Shanghai. China has started looking seriously at green building, due in part to the high health care costs associated with pollution. The Portland office of LEED consultant U.S. Green Building Services has been active in all kinds of projects there, including Shanghai Tower, principal Richard Manning said.

“We’ve done a 122-story building, and a bunch of KFCs,” he said.

Packard said Europe is passing Portland and the U.S. He’s currently traveling the world learning about sustainable building practices in places like London, Paris and Madrid. As an environmentalist who cares about mitigating climate change, he said what he’s seen is heartening. But as a Portlander, it has him worried about the health of the local market.

The problem is that sustainability is still central to Portland’s brand, Packard said.

“Can we really say we’re leaders on this?” he said. “If we want to lead on this kind of thing, we can’t just do it once in the past 10, 20 years. We have to continually apply forward-thinking.”

Barriers to innovative projects

Also, a list recently passed around the Internet, of the country’s hottest green cities, omitted Portland. Mayoral candidate Ted Wheeler called this “embarrassing” in a debate.

But, Vanessa Keitges points out, Portland did make a recent USA Today list of cities with the worst heat islands.

Keitges, co-founder of Columbia Green Technologies, is also frustrated these days. Its status as a Portland green building firm carries a cachet outside the area, she said, like being a tequila maker from Mexico. Her company’s green roof tray systems provide a simpler, cheaper alternative to waterproof membranes, but can run afoul of building codes, stalling projects and making it harder to find clients.

“Innovation is happening so fast across the country and the world that the building codes have to try to keep up. And in Portland, they haven’t,” she said.

There were as many green roofs installed in Portland last year as there were in 2000, she said.

One issue with green products like roof trays is that they must be specified through an architect.

Melissa Milburn, spokeswoman for SolTerra, said her firm has been successful in part because it’s “vertically integrated.” SolTerra, with offices in Seattle and Portland, owns, designs, builds and leases all its projects, all of which are heavily green. This helps accelerate the permitting process, she said.

“We have everybody in one room,” Milburn said. “We have the architect sitting right next the construction leads. They’re a part of the same team, at the same company, with the same mission.”

SolTerra’s Woodlawn project, they say, features the largest “living wall” on the West Coast. The 8-year old company owns 13 properties it plans to develop near its two offices.

Establishing eco-districts, like Lloyd or one including Portland State University, is one proposed way to reduce costs by pooling resources. Architect and affordable housing advocate Stuart Emmons says another is altering RFPs for public projects, which he says are so dense and complicated that they can be an early barrier for forward-thinking developers, as well as for minority- and women-owned businesses.

“RFPs are the gateways to projects; they’re a really big deal,” he said. “In general, I feel like innovation is not supported in these RFPs. It’s always, ‘How many things have you done?’ ”

As projects are downscaled, the green attributes end up being affordable for spaces with the highest rents. That has led to a feeling that green features are perks of being rich, Ryan Olsen said.

“We shouldn’t treat them like amenities – this is healthy living. It’s good for all people,” he said.

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As the president of Portland-based Green Building Services, Elaine Aye heads one of the country’s leading sustainability consulting firms. Her passion and professionalism have combined to make her a strong voice for green building and sustainability.

Aye has served on numerous committees and boards that include the Global Design Alliance, the city of West Linn Sustainability Advisory Board and the International Interior Design Association Board. She has been actively involved in the Building Owners and Managers Association, serving on two committees and developing numerous training programs for the organization both in Oregon and at the national level.

For 14 years she has been an ambassador for the U.S. Green Building Council and Green Building Certification Institute.  She was awarded the prestigious designation of LEED Fellow in 2012. Aye has made more than 25 major conference presentations since 2004 and has contributed articles to industry publications.

As a consultant, she has been involved with more than 100 buildings’ project teams worldwide that have sought Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design ratings. She served as a member of the LEED-CI (Commercial Interiors) Core Committee, and has taught industry professionals and students about green building.

Aye’s community involvement is extensive. She has promoted sustainability and green building in schools and nonprofits. Her efforts assisting the “greening” of the Rose Garden arena in Portland led her to help create The Green Sports Alliance, a national nonprofit that promotes sustainability in the sports and entertainment industries.

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Architecture, engineering and construction firms assisting companies with sustainability reporting practices may want to take advantage of a two-day workshop in Portland this month.

The training course will focus on G4 – the Global Reporting Initiative‘s next generation of sustainability reporting guidelines. Sustainability professionals will learn how to determine a company’s global and environmental footprint, said Elaine Aye, president of Portland-based Green Building Services, a co-sponsor of the event.

Local examples will be used to illustrate trends in sustainability reporting, including fair trade practices, material aspects, governance, ethics and social responsibility, Aye said.

“Architects, engineers and builders have clients who are doing this, and they need to understand why they are doing this,” she said. “It will be a way to actually support their clients more holistically.”

The training also will delve into regulatory compliance in different states, and teach organizations how to write G4 reports, Aye said.

“If I’m an architect or an engineer, I’m going to want to know the concerns of my clients,” she said. “This can help them better understand the work that they do.”

Fees range from $500 for students to $900 for government agencies or other organizations, to $1,200 for other participants. Cheaper, early-bird fees are available through June 15.

For more information about the training, visit or send an email to r.sanz@bsdconsulting.com.

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SUBMITTED?BY: SKYLAB ARCHITECTURE

The city of Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services doesn’t just talk the sustainability talk. When it came time for the bureau to build new offices for itself, it also walked the green walk.

Following the city’s Green Building Policy that all new city office spaces be designed and constructed to meet requirements for at least a LEED gold rating, the bureau knew it needed to create a space befitting of the agency that was tasked with directing that policy.

The bureau worked with Skylab Architecture for the project design and a construction team led by Skanska USA Building. Close collaboration resulted in a project that maintained a sense of balance between the building and the surrounding landscaping, while also illustrating the concepts behind the bureau’s directions and green building requirements.

The building was designed as a gentle arch rather than a conventional box. The organic curve anchors a large campus commons area. Mirrored thermal glass reflects and refracts light to visually integrate the interior space into the commons. A serrated curtain wall with operable vents allows natural ventilation and cooling. The roof was set at multiple serrated pitches, and topped with soil and greenery to mitigate rainfall outflow. Roof folds allow daylight to penetrate deep into the interior space.

Photovoltaic cells reduce energy consumption. Runoff from parking areas is mitigated into the surrounding landscaping, managed by vegetated stormwater facilities and nontraditional pipe drainage called ‘bubblers.”

Particular attention was directed to protecting the quality of stormwater and wastewater draining into the sewage system and eventually back into local waterways.  In this instance, the building was literally yards away from the treatment facility. Stormwater treatment and vegetated roofs called “eco-roofs” are two major programs the Bureau of

Environmental Services promotes, and both were incorporated into the 12,000-square-foot open-studio building

The completed project serves as an active office space and a center where visitors can learn first-hand how effective building and landscape architecture can come together successfully and sustainably.

PROJECT?TEAM + STATS:
Location: Portland, Oregon
Cost: $6.7 million
Start date: June 2012
Completion date: October 2013
Owner/Developer: City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services
Architect: Skylab Architecture
Landscape Architect: 2.ink Studio
Engineers: Catena Consulting Engineers, SOLARC Architecture and Engineering Inc., Vigil Agrimis Inc.
General contractor: Skanska USA Building
Other Associates: Architectural Cost Consultants, Biella Lighting Design, Green Building Services, The Façade Group, The Felt Hat

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In the depths of a grim economic downturn, and are embracing a big opportunity.

The Oregon-based firms recently won a five-year contract to work on a major development project in Doha, Qatar, in the Middle East. The plan is to transform 76 acres of the city’s center into a cohesive, energy- and water-efficient district aesthetically rooted in Qatari tradition.

“This is a substantial project, said Ralph DiNola, a Green Building Services principal. “I know we’ve had an economic slowdown around the world, but this is one of those bright spots.”

, a Qatari real estate development firm, announced its appointment of the Oregon-based team in July, following a long bidding process.

“We’ve done work in sustainable township planning in Abu Dhabi,” said Omid Nabipoor, president of Interface Engineering. “It was through our reputation and word of mouth that we were invited to provide a proposal. And we realized they needed a combination of sustainability consultants as well as engineers, so I brought GBS onto the team.”

The $5.5 billion project involves development of a mixed-use area featuring commercial and residential properties, hotels, mosques, a school, a public transit system and other community-oriented infrastructure.

Each building will involve separate architects, engineers and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design consultants; however, Interface and GBS will implement a sitewide framework to ensure that all buildings come together to meet client goals.

“We were brought in to put the layers on top of each other – to look for precedents, accuracy, and to make sure everything is implemented that’s gone into the plan,” Nabipoor said.

The project could become the largest one outside of the U.S. to implement LEED for Neighborhood Development – a rating system that the U.S. Green Building Council piloted in 2007 and approved in 2009.

The project is being built to master design standards devised by Arup, an international design, planning and engineering firm responsible for the structural design of the Sydney Opera House. The document prepared by Arup is more than 1,000 pages; it brings a cohesive vision to the downtown, with a focus on the city’s cultural context. It also sets aggressive goals for energy efficiency, water efficiency and other sustainability metrics.

As the project moves forward, Interface and GBS will be charged with making necessary amendments to the original design standards.

“Having goals and standards are not unique,” said Andy Frichtl, principal at Interface, “but the standards that have been put in place for (this project) leave very few rocks unturned.”

Energy goals include reaching efficiency levels 31.5 percent greater than minimum requirements, and providing 75 percent of all hot water loads with solar thermal power. Water conservation is a significant challenge because most potable water must go through desalinization processes, which increase electricity usage.

Each building is expected to generate at least 10 percent of its energy from photovoltaics, which Frichtl said is a challenge because of the limited wall area of the high-rise buildings and required architectural aesthetics.

But the aesthetics are what several team members find most significant about the project. Though the region continues to add glass high-rises and other structures completely out of context for the culture and climate, the design inspiration for the new “Heart of Doha” is traditional architecture of the Persian Gulf region.

“Basically, it’s a transition from the kind of modern, international style that’s so common there, to a design that really looks at the traditional forms of urban planning,” DiNola said. “It’s using traditional architectural forms and materials, but in contemporary way.”

The first phase of construction is under way for the six-phase project, and approximately 60 percent of the buildings have been designed. As the team from Oregon ramps up its efforts in Doha, it is not only consulting, but also reconsidering strategies.

“They’re thinking very big scale, not just block by block,” DiNola said. “As we look to bring sustainability to Portland, are we thinking about putting infrastructure in the ground that would lead to one of these distributed infrastructure projects that could be of this scale?”

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Four Oregon architects have been elevated to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows and will be honored at a ceremony next month.

• Joseph A. Collins, partner at ZGF Architects, is a recognized authority on the planning and design of academic and scientific research facilities.
• Thomas G. Pene, principal at BOORA Architects, is a respected designer of visual and performing arts centers.
• Alan Scott, principal and co-founder at Green Building Services, has worked on green buildings by providing training workshops and technical assistance.
• University of Oregon Professor Michael Fifield has been selected as a fellow for his contributions to architecture education.

The 2011 Jury of Fellows at AIA elevated 104 members to its College of Fellows. The organization has more than 80,000 members, and only 2,700 have been elevated to the college. The 2011 fellows will be honored at an investiture ceremony May 13 at the 2011 National AIA Convention and Design Exposition in New Orleans.

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Four Oregon architects have been elevated to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows and will be honored at a ceremony next month.

• Joseph A. Collins, partner at ZGF Architects, is a recognized authority on the planning and design of academic and scientific research facilities.
• Thomas G. Pene, principal at BOORA Architects, is a respected designer of visual and performing arts centers.
• Alan Scott, principal and co-founder at Green Building Services, has worked on green buildings by providing training workshops and technical assistance.
• University of Oregon Professor Michael Fifield has been selected as a fellow for his contributions to architecture education.

The 2011 Jury of Fellows at AIA elevated 104 members to its College of Fellows. The organization has more than 80,000 members, and only 2,700 have been elevated to the college. The 2011 fellows will be honored at an investiture ceremony May 13 at the 2011 National AIA Convention and Design Exposition in New Orleans.

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Data is scare on the environmental and economic benefits of building reuse. But a study being undertaken by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Portland’s Green Building Services and Seattle’s Cascadia Green Building Council hopes to change that.

The three groups plan to study different building types throughout the US to examine the different environmental impacts avoided when owners reuse and retrofit an existing building rather than tearing it down and building a new green structure.

“We don’t have very good information on the real environmental benefits of using what we have already made an investment in,” said Jason McLennan, chief executive officer of the Cascadia Green Building Council. “We hope to get a matrix of answers so that people can understand the cost and environmental impact of reuse.”

General contractor Skanska and life cycle assessment consultant Quantis will also assist with the study, which is expected to be completed in early 2011.

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