Our LEED Accredited Professionals are experienced in building facilities with certification criteria for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and CHPS (Collaborative for High Performance Schools). They help our clients meet the environmental and conservation demands of the future.
A green building (also known as a sustainable building) is a structure that is designed, renovated, operated or reused in an ecological and resource-efficient manner. Green buildings are designed to meet certain objectives such as protecting occupant health, improving employee productivity, using energy, water and other resources more efficiently and reducing the overall impact to the environment.
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Durotech can provide value and economic benefits from green building.
Green building may cost more up front, but it ultimately saves money through lowering operating costs over the life of the building. The green building approach applies a project life cycle cost analysis for determining the appropriate up-front expenditure. This analytical method calculates costs over the useful life of the asset.
These and other cost savings can only be fully realized when they are incorporated at the project's design phase with the assistance of an integrated team of professionals. The integrated systems approach ensures that the building is designed as one system rather than a collection of stand-alone systems.
Some of the benefits of this approach include improving occupant health, comfort and productivity and reducing pollution and landfill waste.
For the aesthetics of green building, the emphasis is on designing a building that is in harmony with the natural features and resources surrounding the site. There are several key aspects in designing sustainable buildings that include securing green building materials from local sources, reducing loads, optimizing systems and generating on-site renewable energy.
New technologies are constantly being developed to complement current practices in creating more sustainable structures. Durotech's objective is to construct green buildings that reduce the overall impact of the built environment on human health and the natural environment by:
- Efficiently using energy, water and other resources
- Protecting occupant health
- Improving employee productivity
- Reducing waste, pollution and environmental degradation
For example, green buildings may incorporate sustainable materials in their construction (e.g., content that is reused, recycled or made from renewable resources), create healthy indoor environments with minimal pollutants (e.g., reduced product emissions) and/or feature landscaping that reduces water usage (e.g., by using native plants that survive without extra watering).
While the practices employed in green building are constantly evolving and may differ from region to region, fundamental principles persist from which the method is derived. These include siting and structure design efficiency, energy efficiency, water efficiency, materials efficiency, indoor environmental quality enhancement, operations and maintenance optimization and waste and toxics reduction. The essence of green building is an optimization of one or more of these principles. With the proper synergistic design, individual green building principles may work together to produce a greater cumulative effect.
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