It makes a lot of sense to build sustainable buildings: lower environmental impact, lower operating costs, higher occupant satisfaction, healthier work environment, and higher worker productivity. Between the faculty and research students, there is substantial expertise in sustainable buildings at UW. So the question becomes (in true Waterloo fashion) why not? Why aren’t we building them?
A 2005 thesis project entitled “Institutional Incentives and Barriers to the Construction of Green Buildings at the University of Waterloo” by Gregory Richardson, a former UW student in environmental studies, sheds some light on the issue. The paper deserves a close read but the main conclusion is that Waterloo has “strong academic prowess in sustainable buildings but weak university leadership for sustainability, no sustainability targets, only minimal collaboration between UW academic experts and Plant Operation employees, and little financial incentives for either faculty or Plant Operations to improve energy efficiency in the design of new buildings and operations of existing buildings.” In addition, the key finding was the “lack of communication between the university and students, staff and public regarding new building construction, guidelines and goals.”
Strong leadership on sustainable buildings has proven effective at other institutions of higher learning, and was identified by UW faculty to be a key contributor to the construction of sustainable buildings. Environmentalist and professor David Orr organized the design of the Center for Environmental Studies at Oberlin College. His research suggests that having a project champion as well as the support of university leadership is essential for the construction of sustainable buildings.
Following from high level leadership, sustainability targets are also important prerequisites to sustainable design. This lack of entrenched sustainability targets at UW has been identified by numerous students, some writing about the need and approach for such policies (“The Path to Institutionalizing Sustainability” by S.Kiang) and others creating the targets themselves (“Greening the University of Waterloo’s Building Standards” by K. Gregory et al. and “Green Building Guidelines” by R. Askew et al.). These research papers were all written more than seven years ago, yet nothing seems to have come from these students’ efforts. Indeed, the WATgreen initiative, inspired by David Orr, which sought to transfrom UW into a “showcase of environmental responsibility, an ecosystem in harmony with its environment”, is no longer active.
Integrated design is an approach to designing buildings that requires collaboration among all actors to ensure a holistic approach is taken. Traditionally, a building is designed by an architect, the plans are handed off to the builders, and the building is then occupied and maintained by people who had no say in how it was built. By bringing together the faculty (i.e. the occupants), Plant Operations (the maintainers), the contractors, and the architect with a goal to maximize sustainability, individual expertise can be combined in an elegant way.
The involvement of all actors in the design of campus buildings should extend to students, another major occupant of campus buildings. Instead, the building process lacks transparency and makes it extremely difficult for interested individuals to get involved. Just the simple act of publishing building-related data would make the process publicly accountable, increase energy performance, and advance student and faculty research. Furthermore, student consultation and collaboration in building design could be sought out early in the design process.
The 2005 research paper quoted above lists four recommendations for catalyzing green building design and construction at UW. 1) Create strong university leadership through a Green Building Task Force, 2) Establish guidelines and targets using UW researchers as information sources, 3) Facilitate collaboration and partnerships, especially between faculty and Plant Operations staff, and 4) Foster increased communication by publishing all building data online. These recommendations may be seven years old but they are still as applicable today as they were then. What are we waiting for?
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