With today’s greater emphasis on sustainability, energy efficiency and healthy environments for students, educational facilities can benefit from seeking Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.

Indoor Air Quality Boost

The LEED standard is designed to encourage the construction of environmentally healthy and energy-efficient facilities. Incorporating the LEED guidelines and best practices related to indoor air quality can especially benefit students.

The IAQ requirements in LEED v4.1, which should become the official standard in early 2020, have been updated to comply with the 2017 version of the California Department of Health standards. It’s a more recent standard for environmentally acceptable products and materials that can be used in construction and furnishing schools.

Improving indoor air quality in schools is all about protecting students. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that poor indoor air quality causes student illnesses and increases absenteeism. The flip side of the equation is that finding ways to improve air quality in schools ends up boosting student performance, according to the EPA:

IAQ problems can cause increased absences due to respiratory infections, allergic diseases from biological contaminants, or adverse reactions to chemicals used in schools. … Studies demonstrate a connection between improvements in IAQ — either from increased outdoor air ventilation rates or from the removal of pollution sources — and improved performance of children and adults.

An important component of the LEED certification is the section designed to reduce volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions indoors. These emissions can damage air quality and human health, according to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

LEED Planning Logistics

With USGBC transitioning to LEED v4.1, facility planners and managers for school districts have a golden opportunity to pursue certification, as the updated standards make several environmental credits more accessible. Project managers will have an easier time actually finding materials and building products that are compliant.

LEED v4.1 will remain in a pilot phase through early 2020 at the least. Until then, ongoing projects can opt into being evaluated using the LEED v4.1 standards on a credit-by-credit basis. This gives project teams the flexibility to use the LEED version they find most beneficial.

Communication and Record-Keeping

Local governments can end up spending hundreds of millions of dollars building new educational facilities. Although the funding bodies might balk at the idea of going green on a project, fearing it will inflate the cost, using basic green construction techniques and materials can be done without drastically increasing the bottom line.

Even better, green building practices focus on energy efficiency and durability. This means long-term budget savings on energy and maintenance costs and a higher ROI over the life of the facility.

When pursuing LEED certification, project managers must have practices in place to help ensure proper communication and record-keeping or face the prospect of failure. This starts with an ongoing dialogue among all the stakeholders — project owners and managers, designers and contractors — to establish a clear plan for using the right materials and processes.

Detailed record-keeping is also a requirement. Not having an adequate system in place allowing day-to-day tracking and recording of materials and processes used is a recipe for failure. Given the scale of educational facility construction, attempting to reconstruct a record of materials and processes used during a project covering years is virtually impossible. Without this documentation, efforts to achieve any sort of third-party certification for the project will not be successful.

Summing It Up

Green building practices matter in educational facilities. The built environment of schools can affect student performance and health for better or worse, especially when it comes to indoor air quality issues.

Receiving LEED certification for a project means more than bragging rights. It’s a pathway to improved quality of life for students and teachers, helping provide them with healthy facilities where they can work and learn in safety. Green building practices can reduce lifetime operational costs for educational facilities, increasing the ROI on what is often the largest capital expenditure for local governments.

Tommy Linstroth is founder and CEO of Green Badger, a cloud-based solution for equipping project teams of all levels of experience with the tools they need to document LEED as efficiently as possible.

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LEXINGTON, Ga. — Leading provider of facility solutions, ABM, has launched an Energy Performance Contracting program for Oglethorpe County Schools in Lexington, Ga., which will generate savings on energy costs and contribute to facility upgrades throughout the county’s school system.

ABM’s made-to-order solution will assist Oglethorpe County in achieving several large infrastructure and capital upgrades that Beverley Levine, superintendent of the Oglethorpe County School System said they probably would not have been able to fund for several years.

The program will bring these facility additions and improvements with no upfront costs, while also producing what is projected to be more than $9.4 million in energy and operating costs throughout a 20-year period.

Energy efficiency improvements of the facilities will include retrofitting lighting systems to LED lighting, upgrades to all HVAC systems as well as installing state-of-the-art HVAC control systems, improved ventilation systems, roofing reparation, water conservation systems and installation of hand dryers across the entire school system.

ABM Technical Solutions President Mark Newsome said that the program will benefit students by enhancing their educational and extra-curricular activities.

This includes the installation of LED lighting systems at the high school’s baseball and softball fields, allowing the school to host its first after-dark games. The project will also provide funding for a new track, new scoreboards with advertisement opportunities at the football and soccer stadium as well as the softball and baseball fields. Furthermore, there will be renovations to the home and visitors field houses and concession stands, along with repairs to the bleachers.

There are also plans to build a large performing arts classroom by merging to two classrooms and installing new flooring, a ceiling and moving its existing electrical system.

Oglethorpe County School System formerly planned to postpone the upgrades until a bond had been paid in full in 2023, but a meeting with ABM representatives made school administrators realize they would be able to use the savings to address their facility needs immediately. Levine stated that ABM’s expertise provided the county with a financial solution to ultimately improve their students’ learning environment and athletic facilities.

The project launched on May 1, and is expected for completion in April 2019.

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JM Electrical began work on the schools in June 2016, starting with the installation of power and controls for new HVAC equipment (provided by Trane) for Oakmont High Regional School and Overlook Middle School, according to a statement by the firm. The schools will now operate in a more energy efficient manner and, in turn, experience minimized energy costs. The company’s electricians also worked to ensure the project was completed on time and on budget.

“We were pleased to work with the Ashburnham Westminster school system in upgrading [its] HVAC controls,” said John Guarracino, project manager at JM Electrical, in a statement. “We are always happy to provide school systems with the tools they need to operate more efficiently and create a more comfortable learning environment for both the students and teachers.”

With no capital outlay required from the district, the project team delivered more than $4 million in much-needed facility upgrades, including a new roof, HVAC equipment, a biomass boiler fueled by wood pellets and a state of the art building automation system, according to a statement by Chris Marshall, general manager of energy services at New England Trane.

In addition, Trane has guaranteed energy savings exceeding $5 million over the 20-year term enabled by Massachusetts General Law CH25a, 11i, which focuses on energy management services contracts and will be used to pay for the project.

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