Certifying our own offices?

Hi Jared, HKS does have an approach for offices. It is LEED Platinum and WELL Platinum for offices in major cities. Gold is the target for others. We also try to find one thing to do a “research” deep dive on something. That may or may not be attached to the certification and is sometimes around a particular design approach. Think displacement ventilation, chilled beams, low embodied carbon… We use advocate for this for a few reasons … * The team and the office leadership get firsthand experience with these certifications. * The broader AEC community is interested, and it enables us to share. * We learn stuff. * Our marketing folks like this. * It enables us to focus more directly on the implications of the offices to our firm carbon footprint. * We are increasingly being asked for information on our ESG approach, policy, systems, and impact. This enables us to have an answer for part of these assessments. * Authenticity we claim to clients that we deliver environmentally sensitive work all the time, then we need to show it at home. This has not been simple. It was not hard to sell to the firm leadership for the reasons above. Defining the budget implications has taken some time to reach an understand around. The hard part is that each office likes to do its own thing and coming in with an overarching “directive” at the enterprise level rubs some office leaders the wrong way. Also, the budgets are managed by the local office leadership, and they do cut stuff all the time that is not optimal for certification. Catching this in time can be tricky. Even though leadership is in agreement getting the office directors to deliver can be tricky. We do not always achieve the goals stated above, particularly the platinum WELL part, but setting the bar high and asking teams to justify anything less is a good approach. We have an individual in the DesignGreen team who is focused on the office upgrades and certifications. She is not the only person working on the certifications, but it is very useful to have someone keeping it relevant and active through the project. No surprise, but the documentation does take time and effort, Thay needs recognition and planning. Helpful? Rand Rand​​​​ Ekman , FAIA, LEED Fellow Chief Sustainability Officer Partner [HKS, Inc] 125 S Clark St, #1100, Chicago, IL 60603 +1 312 262 9750 | m +1 847 420 5577 | File transfer | www.hksinc.com From: Jared Sillike

Ill tab onto Rand’s WRNS has a general approach, but its been fueled by “if you are going to ask your client to do it, you need to do it”. We have four offices and are more on the medium size end, so this is easier than for big firms. Policy? No. just me making trouble. But again, if you are asking your client to do this, you need to feel the pain (and joy) We have done LEED (WAY back when in 2006), LBC Petal (Material) 2020 and tried LBC on two offices with varied (not so great benchmark but really great education) success 2019. We are now dipping into WELL and other LBC versions now as we have an unusual opportunity as three offices are doing 3 different things (downsize, upsize, move). It was not hard to sell to leadership (we are smallish), but it was interesting to do (when you have to pay more for fixtures that have a Declare label for instance – there are many moments of yelling) Leadership pitches: * “if you are going to ask your client to do it, you need to do it”. * If sustainability is for everyone and not only the top 10% shouldn’t we figure out how to do it on our limited budget? * Education education education. (Rands “we learn stuff”) * Everyone else is doing this, so why would we want to be behind After we did it for ourselves, and we treated it like a puzzle or a challenge, the “aha moment sunk in” and our former staff leaders/design leads who were resistant and making change in their projects and are excited to engage the market differently. Just do it From: Rand Ekman