Green Scene

BY PHIL HAGEN

Green Building Consultants

Back in the early days of the green-building craze—four years ago—Charlie Popeck was invited to do a seminar for a mechanical subcontractor. He showed up surprised to see about 50 people in the room from a group that's not exactly at the forefront of sustainability. The reason: They'd just picked up a LEED project.

Popeck was curious: "How did you pick up a LEED project if you don't know anything about it?" he asked.

The response: "We just added $100,000 to our bid."

Popeck, president of Green Ideas in Phoenix, likes that story for a few reasons. Not only does it help explain the existence of green-building consulting companies such as his, but it also explains why business is booming. These firms help designers, architects, builders, engineers and even subcontractors rise to the 21st century's nearly mandatory challenge of sustainable building. It's not just about saving the planet, but saving headaches and money as well.

"We take the business approach," Popeck says. "If you take the sustainability tree-hugger approach, people are going to say, 'Okay, go build your buildings out of mud,' because if you can't convince the owners, they're never going to do it. We show them why it makes sense, why it doesn't cost as much as they think, and that this is where the world is going."

Since joining forces with partner Mark Wilhelm in 2004, Popeck has watched business skyrocket. Green Ideas and its staff of 10 LEED-accredited professionals have managed more than 50 sustainable projects, from a LEED Platinum laboratory at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff to Echelon, an 87-acre resort project going up on the Las Vegas Strip. They've also trained some 4,000 people and 200 companies on LEED and green building.

And by no means are they alone.

"It's a massive field," says Jay Coalson, one of six principals with Portland-based Green Building Services (GBS), "and I feel that way knowing that we're focused on a small portion of it."

Green Ideas served as a green building consultant for the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University in Tempe, designed by Gould Evans Associates of Phoenix, in association with Lord, Aeck & Sargent of Atlanta, Georgia.

As an indication of how big the picture is (the U.S. Green Building Council doesn't keep tabs on consultants), GBS has offices in three cities (including Orlando and Sacramento) and projects in 17 states that are managed by 41 employees—with several new positions posted. Coalson says his is one of about 10 consulting businesses that size, and "after that, the one-to-four-person firms are spotted all over the place."

Durango, Colorado–based Earthly Ideas is proudly in the latter group. Michelle Reott is the company and has been since 1992, making her a true pioneer in green-building consulting. The former aerospace engineer's career was propelled by her role as project manager for the construction of Whole Foods corporate headquarters in Austin, Texas, which served as the sustainable commercial prototype for one of America's giant green retailers.

Reott witnessed the field's wake-up call about 2001, when LEED took hold. "That's when people realized that they needed help," she says. "My phone definitely started ringing more, but I also began noticing that there were more people out there providing consulting services. It made me step back and think, 'How am going to differentiate myself?'"

Naturally it helps to be able to boast 15 years of green consulting on projects across the country, as well as knowing LEED inside and out. But Reott also brings holistic wisdom to the table. "I try not to get the checklist out too early, making sure people understand the motivation behind LEED categories," she says, "and that they understand what indoor air quality is and what that means in relation to health and productivity, and don't get too focused on 'How do we get these points?'"

For example, she recently helped the North Kansas City School District pinpoint its priorities. While the team "cared about recycled-content material and some of the other material attributes," Reott says, "we really wanted air quality to be a goal for children. Then we were able to look back at the LEED checklist and say, 'Okay, which ones make sense for us to try to achieve?'"

GBS, which in two years has grown from a 15-person department within Portland General Electric to a full-blown independent firm, positions itself as having "a comprehensive suite of services," Coalson says. "We never refer to ourselves as LEED consultants, because the rating system is a framework. What we try to focus on is leveraging the internal design expertise of our staff as well as our analytic technical resources to inform good building design, and then looping back to make sure our clients receive the kind of recognition they deserve through the LEED rating system."

In many cases, that recognition exceeds the client's original expectations, Coalson has found. The developers of Providence Newberg Medical Center near Portland, for example, were initially concerned that they might be "biting off too much," that maybe they'd simply strive for basic LEED certification. With GBS's guidance through the "intimidating" process, Providence became the nation's first LEED Gold hospital. "And that's really what we focus on: Once clients see the opportunities available to them, they start realizing that the bar they were going for is low," Coalson says.

The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, a Green Ideas consulting project.

Green Ideas' "whole package" approach includes choosing LEED-experienced architects and engineers for their clients ("because that's one of the first big factors in keeping costs to a minimum," Popeck says), then managing the project's team from the initial charrette to energy modeling to the last step of LEED certification. Along the way, the consultants help develop affordable and effective energy systems and sustainability strategies while scoring energy rebates and tax incentives.

"We know those programs like the back of our hand, because we helped develop them," says Popeck, a founding member of the Arizona Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council (today he's chairman of its Education Committee).

Such insights will increase in value as the green movement grows, with more cities and states jumping on the bandwagon, more building products being developed, and endless innovations ahead on the technology front, from systems to software. It makes you wonder just how big the consulting field could get.

"That's a scary thought," Coalson says. "As busy as we are, while Portland is a leading market in green building, it's not a large market. And the political climate on the national level hasn't yet been conducive to a major sustainability movement. We're already in the middle of a perfect storm that is making the market grow so quickly, but if we add some other factors-other big markets tipping over to green building, the feds changing emphasis—yeah, it's phenomenal."

Green Ideas, 1400 E. Indian School Road, Phoenix, AZ; (602) 512-0584 or www.egreenideas.com.

Green Building Services, 133 S.W. Second Ave., Suite 201, Portland, OR; (503) 467-4710 or www.greenbuildingservices.com.

Earthly Ideas LLC, 250 W, 16th St., Durango, CO; (970) 259-8090 or www.earthly-ideas.com.