It isn't often that you hear anything truly nice about the government, especially the federal government. But when it comes to environmental design, praise comes easy, for the Feds are wa-a-ay out ahead of everyone else. Almost every federal agency has gone green to some extent: The National Park Service, The National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Postal Service, National Institute of Standards and Technology, the departments of Defense, State, Interiors, Energy, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and, of course, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—to name only a few.

The Department of the Navy, under the remarkable leadership of Terry Emmons, FAIA, stands out as the first federal agency to adopt sustainable design for all work. This means that all NAVFAC facility design and construction will incorporate:

•Increased energy conservation and efficiency and use of renewable energy.
•Reduction or elimination of harmful substances and waste.
•Improvements to interior and exterior environments leading to increased productivity and better health.
•Efficiency in resource and materials utilization, especially water resources.
•Selection of materials and products based on life-cycle environmental impacts.
•Recycling and increased use of products with recycled content.

"For NAVFAC, selecting the right A/E firm is key to successfully implementing sustainable design," says Emmons, chief architect of NAVFAC and author of the new policies. "All A/E firms wishing to do business with NAVFAC in the future must demonstrate extensive knowledge and experience in applying sustainability concepts and principles to facilities and infrastructure problems through an integrated design approach."

These are powerful words and they have architecture and engineering firms all over the country scrambling to "go green." The membership of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) reflects this trend. My firm, Burt Hill Kosar Rittelmann, was the first A/E firm to join the council back in 1993. Since then, close to 80 others have become members, making the architectural-engineering membership category USGBC's largest, by far. We here at Burt Hill don't necessarily welcome all this green competition, but we know that the design professions must move in this direction.

Another federal agency, the General Services Administration (GSA), also has gone green and it, too, is raising the bar across this land. GSA is our nation's landlord. It manages federally owned and leased property currently totaling more than 280 million square feet, providing workplaces for more than one million federal workers. GSA helps U.S. government agencies all over the world acquire supplies, furniture, computers, tools and equipment, more than $50 billion worth of goods and services per year. Now that's clout! With its unparalleled market strength, it's safe to say that when GSA issues a directive, everybody listens. Luckily for us, environmental issues are of the highest priority at GSA.

Those of us who have been in this business for a while remember the old days when products had to be on the GSA "schedule" in order to be specified for a public project. It was a cumbersome and frustrating system. In fact, GSA itself was a bloated bureaucracy. Enter Dave Barram, appointed in 1996 as the agency's administrator, fresh from Silicon Valley. In its June, 1999 issue, Fast Company describes Barram's mission: "To take what he had learned on the cutting edge of business and apply it to one of the most old-fashioned agencies in the federal government. 'Any organization has to be in a constant state of reinvention, or it's all over,' says Barram."

And so GSA got out of the specification business. Commercial products now are purchased based on a best value decision, where performance measures are developed and everything possible is quantified—including environmental issues.

Partly in response to executive orders and programs and partly as an aspect of its own reinvention, GSA introduced a new concept in 1998 called Planet GSA. Focusing on four areas where GSA has a federal responsibility—buy green, build green, drive green, and save green—"they hoped to inspire even greater efforts within GSA and to encourage other Federal agencies to work with us to safeguard the environment for future generations." Buy Green focuses on procurement, waste management, life cycle and recycling issues. It promotes all the environmental products and services in its supply system by highlighting them in their publications. Build Green adopts sustainable design principles to all phases of federal facilities, to their operation and maintenance and to those activities that impact indoor environmental quality, including the use of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. Drive Green promotes alternative commuting strategies for the federal workforce as well as environmentally preferable means for the procurement, operation and maintenance of the federal fleet, including the acquisition of alternative fueled vehicles. Save Green is all about reducing energy and water consumption at federal facilities as well as promoting the use of renewable energy and the Energy Star label.

GSA signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Energy and the EPA to cooperate on Planet GSA in order to advance its goals throughout the federal government. In that vein, GSA also has created the Adaptable Workplace Lab (AWL), a 10,000-square-foot space at its headquarters in Washington, DC, that features raised flooring, plug-and-play mobile technology and individually controlled environmental systems. They partnered on this project with Carnegie-Mellon University to stay not just current but on the cutting edge of the 21st century workplace.

Green and healthy workspaces promote increased worker productivity. Many of us know this and swear it to be true, but are hard-pressed to prove it with scientific facts. The AWL will be a working laboratory where performance levels can be measured, creating valuable benchmarks. Current innovations, some revolutionary, will be considered, mocked-up and explored. "What-if" simulations will be run. Peer reviews will be conducted to ensure objectivity and to validate the methodology. The economic evaluation of the project will include energy and environmental performance. Concepts such as system efficacy, sustainable and healthy materials, natural conditioning and just-in-time delivery of infrastructures will be studied and compared to standard practices.

Taking what it learns from the AWL and through its incredible market strength, GSA hopes to "motivate industry to develop new generations of lighting, mechanical, networking, controls and interior systems to improve the quality of not just the federal work environment, but office space around the world."

In a recent speech in California, Barram seemed mighty proud of his agency's accomplishments. "We're driving green, buying green, building green and saving green. I trust you can see that GSA cares about the environment. And, it's not just in one or two areas. Our concern runs from lights to furnishings to equipment and supplies—from building materials to cleaning products and pest management. And our programs cover energy conservation, pollution prevention, recycling and use of recycled products. So, we're doing it! We're helping to protect the environment."

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