Office Depot achieved volume pre-certification for its prototype store located in Austin, Texas.

Most companies and large institutions own entire portfolios of buildings — portfolios that include office buildings, retail outlets and lodging facilities, classrooms, and a wide variety of special function facilities that house equipment, records, call centers and more. Many owners have a large amount of the same building type. Given that organizations have finite people and capital resources, how do you approach greening your entire portfolio as quickly and efficiently as possible?

U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Portfolio Program pilot was launched in November 2006 to help answer that question. The pilot’s intent is to find ways to make it easier and more cost-effective for companies to improve the performance of their entire building portfolio, while demonstrating environmental and social responsibility, and to streamline the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System certification process in a way that more efficiently supports that goal.

More than 40 companies are participating with 1,700 buildings and approximately 135 million square feet of building space representing a wide variety of building types. (See sidebar for more information.)

Improving the operations of existing buildings is critical for most owners, and several portfolio participants are starting there. Among the 40 participating companies is Stop & Shop, which was recognized as the first supermarket chain to receive LEED certification within the Portfolio Program, certifying 51 existing grocery stores totaling close to 3.3 million square feet of space. Transwestern has enrolled 51 existing office properties from around the country and will take these buildings through the LEED for Existing Buildings: O&M certification in three groups with the first group including 19 buildings with multiple owners.

LEED CI Prototype west coast interior at Wachovia Corporation. >> Photography by Callison.

Al Skodowski, director of LEED and sustainability for Transwestern, said, “Volume certification will simplify the LEED process and allow large-scale companies like Transwestern to put practices into place more quickly and efficiently.”

That’s critical, said Doug Gatlin, VP of Market Development for USGBC. “The Portfolio Program is about incentivizing companies and owners to integrate LEED into their new and existing buildings with a cost-effective and streamlined certification process. If we are going to provide the immediate and measurable impacts that green building provides, we need to do it a lot faster than one building at a time. We think the Portfolio Program is one critical piece of how we can fulfill that need.”

New construction, especially in terms of volume building in industries such as retail, also offers an important opportunity for speed and scale for green buildings, especially in terms of streamlining the certification process around the certification of multiple iterations of the same design. Office Depot, for example, has achieved volume pre-certification for its store prototype design, piloting a volume certification path to enable companies to integrate LEED attributes into a prototype design and apply it across multiple buildings. The first store will be built in Austin, Texas.

LEED NC Prototype Texas exterior. >> Provided by Wachovia Corporation.

Said Yalmaz Siddiqui, director of Environmental Strategy for Office Depot, “What this means is that not just one store, but our core store prototype incorporates leading edge green design principles.”

Additionally, Wachovia Corporation received pre-certification for its first LEED prototype project, located in Los Angeles. The company plans to open eight LEED-certified project locations throughout California and at least 300 green banking locations by 2010.

“Through this program, we can implement environmentally friendly practices across the board,” said Jeff Austin, head of Sustainable Design for Wachovia’s Corporate Real Estate group. “Wachovia has a nationwide retail footprint, and is building new financial centers each year. With volume certification, we can make a positive environmental impact in a faster, more cost-effective way.”

The Portfolio Program is also piloting registration and certification discounts for enrolling multiple projects with LEED. Additionally, it is working with companies to enable them to develop a more comprehensive view of the impact of their green building practices. This includes not only regular prototype building designs and construction practices, but also strategies for institutionalizing green building and operations procedures as standard business practices.

The Portfolio Program is designed to address new construction, existing real estate and retail portfolios. Participants in the pilot represent a variety of market sectors. The program is currently in pilot testing, which will conclude by the end of the year and will be open to the market at large in 2009. For more information, visit www.usgbc.org/LEED.

U.S. Green Building Council Portfolio Program

Total Participants: 40

Number of Committed Buildings: 1,745

Committed Square Footage: 135 million square feet


List of participants*:
American University
Arden Realty, Inc.
Bank of America
Best Buy
California State University, Los Angeles
CB Richard Ellis
Citi
Cushman & Wakefield
Emory University
Falabella
Fort Bragg, U.S. Army
HSBC, N.A.
Office Depot
Kohl’s
PNC Bank
Kennedy Associates Real Estate
Counsel, LP
City of San Jose, Calif.
Starbucks
State of California, Department of General Services
State of Colorado, Department of Personnel and Administration
Stop & Shop
Syracuse University
Target
Thomas Properties Group
Toyota
Transwestern
University of California, Merced
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of Florida
USAA Real Estate Company
Wachovia
Wells Fargo

As of March 25, 2008, and excluding confidential participants