The San Francisco office of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) was the city’s first LEED certified tenant improvement project over a decade ago - now, following a new renovation of the historic high rise, the building has been awarded both LEED v4 Gold Certification and Living Building Challenge (LBC) Materials Petal Certification. It was one of the first tenant improvement projects worldwide to take on the immense challenge of pursuing - and achieving - both rating systems simultaneously, NRDC says.
The goal of the improvement project was to create a commercial office space with exceptional sustainability standards at a below-market construction cost per square foot.
NRDC began pursuing the Living Building Challenge, in addition to the latest available version of LEED, because it aligned closely with the organization’s mission and sustainability goals. “The Living Building Challenge’s highly rigorous approach to certain topics - such as the ecological impacts of material selection and the consideration of the health and wellness of occupants - compliments LEED certification nicely for the scope of an interior fit out,” Eileen Quigley, NRDC’s sustainability manager, told Environmental Leader.
The project needed close collaboration from the start in order to ensure that all of the rigorous requirements for the rating systems would be met. NRDC built a team of all the major players and developed a streamlined system of product vetting and approvals between the design and construction consultants.
NRDC followed the Integrated Design Process (IDP), which lets all parties to play a part in setting the project’s sustainability goals and to determine the specific design elements that would meet those goals.
The team included representatives from:
Some elements of the implementation included:
Additionally, NRDC installed energy and water submetering systems that collect performance data across a variety of systems to ensure operational practices are aligned with design intent.
For certification, NRDC was able to demonstrate that it had achieved:
Additionally, NRDC expects that the renovation will help improve its overall bottom line. A growing body of research is showing that healthy buildings can impact a company’s bottom line through reduced absenteeism, improved retention, and greater employee productivity, NRDC says.
