Industrial
and
EIN 6918: Graduate Seminar
Spring 2008
February 28, 2008
3PM, MAEB 211
The Economic Benefits
of Green Buildings
Kim
LaScola Needy, Ph.D., P.E., CFPIM
Department of Industrial Engineering
University of Pittsburgh
Abstract
Design and construction of green buildings has gained and is sustaining momentum. United States Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, a nationally recognized benchmark for high-performance buildings, has seen a significant increase in the number of registered and certified projects. An important next step in advancing green building is determining if green buildings are performing as expected and determining their benefits. Several studies suggest green construction can result in significant cost savings by improving employee productivity, improving health and safety, and providing savings from energy, maintenance, and operational costs.
We
have established a research framework to examine green building performance and
tested the framework with a precast concrete company that had constructed a new
green production facility.
Quantitative and qualitative metrics were collected via direct
measurement, surveys, interviews, and focus groups. The results from the precast concrete
company will be presented, including an engineering economic analysis. Additionally, we discuss the extension
of the green building metric research protocol to other building types,
specifically, hospitals. In this
sector, in addition to examining the change in nursing productivity, we examine
the impact of green building on patient outcomes. We present our ongoing long-term
research study of Children’s