Green Opportunities
Mar 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Susan Haifleigh
Existing buildings are a key component in making a campus sustainable.
A leading example
The "2007 Kiwi Green College Report" named the top 50 schools that "will help your kids help the planet," and Salem State College, Salem, Mass., was one of those 50. The college has shown leadership by undertaking a ground-breaking approach to tracking sustainability on campus.
Stephen Keyes, director of campus development, and Thomas Osborne, director of sustainability, saw value in combining the college's traditional facility condition assessments with green initiatives that would help the campus meet the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment.
The college wasn't setting aside funding for specific green initiatives, but administrators felt it was important to single out projects and costs that could enhance campus sustainability.
"We have positioned ourselves to be first in line when the funding becomes available, and the best way to accomplish that was to know where we stand currently, what we want to undertake and how much it will cost," says Keyes.
Working with its existing facilities group and a consulting team, Salem State established a specially trained green assessment team to identify potential green opportunities, and conventional operations and maintenance needs simultaneously. This approach minimized deployment costs, and the resulting data helped the school set its conventional capital funding and planning goals, as well as its sustainability goals. By working on one portion of its existing building portfolio at a time, it has been able to minimize the upfront investment and maximize the effectiveness of the dollars spent with a better decisionmaking process.
As Salem State conducts building assessments in the future, it will be able to build upon the foundation provided by the green assessment.
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