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NewsvineAs widespread campus construction forges ahead, Jack Cleary, associate vice president for academic projects and operations, assured The Daily that long-term sustainability is a priority.
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Unlike other universities, Stanford uses custom standards for ensuring long-term sustainability in new buildings, including graduate student housing. Many schools puruse LEED certification, which Stanford planners deem unsuitable.
Unlike many other universities, which use Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards as a guide for sustainability, Stanford has designed custom standards.
Yale recently made headlines when it announced it was reevaluating its pursuit of LEED certification for all new campus buildings, which Stanford policy planners have also decided is not well-suited for the University. Cleary said that LEED was designed primarily to address sustainability specifically in new office buildings and does not translate well to campus projects such as classrooms, auditoriums, performances spaces and libraries. Cleary also said campus-wide initiatives such as storm water management plans and transportation programs are excluded from LEED’s certification process.
“We believe that by following our own sustainability guidelines, a typical Stanford building is LEED silver equivalent,” Cleary said, referring to the ranking system’s use of gold, silver and platinum certifications. “We know this because 90 percent of the professional project management staff at Stanford is LEED accredited, which means all of our projects have a Stanford LEED professional providing guidance to the process.”
The Graduate School of Business Knight Management Center, slated to open in 2010, will pursue LEED certification for its new buildings. Achieving certification will require approximately $500,000 in additional fees and certification costs.
“This certification will help [the business school] in telling the story about sustainability on the project, but it does not necessarily guarantee a higher performing building than if our typical process was followed,” Cleary said.
Instead, three documents — the Project Delivery Process at Stanford (PDP), the Guidelines for Sustainable Buildings (GSB) and the Life Cycle Cost Analysis Guidelines (LCCA) — are designed to ensure that proven sustainable features and practices are considered during the design process at Stanford.
“Essentially, the PDP provides the roadmap, the GSB outlines sustainable priorities and opportunities at key points in the process and the LCAA ensures that we are making sound, responsible decisions that make good financial sense through a simply payback analysis,” Cleary said.
According to Cleary, the documents provide specific criteria for five environmental aspects of University construction, which include sustainability of the site design and planning, water management, minimization of energy use, materials, resources and waste, and indoor environmental quality.
Specific criteria to be applied to the construction includes optimizing the use of natural lighting, reducing energy use, maximizing local product procurement and recycling at least 70 percent of construction waste.
Although he maintained that sustainability remains a priority when constructing University buildings, Cleary said it is not the only objective.
“[Competing priorities] also include academic program, level of quality, aesthetics, cost, schedule, code requirements, land use and operations,” he explained. “The projects we build are first and foremost to house research that will further our academic mission.”