[ARTICLE] Glumac Relocates to LEED Platinum-Designed Office at the Standard Insurance Center

by Christine Hamilton, Corporate Marketing Coordinator

Glumac relocated to a new 15,150 sf, LEED Platinum-designed office space at the Standard Insurance Center at the beginning of January, 2012. Located at 900 SW Fifth Ave., Suite 1600, the office includes the entire 16th floor of the 27-story, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed 1968 building. The building is owned by Standard Insurance Company.

The Standard Insurance Center was selected in part due to its transit-central location. The downtown Portland transit mall runs on Fifth and Sixth Avenues and includes transportation options such as bus, light rail and bicycle lanes. Many Glumac employees take advantage of these eco-friendly commuting options. Glumac President Steven Straus further comments, “We appreciate the collaboration with The Standard to develop a showcase floor for their building that will achieve dramatic energy reduction and improved productivity...all in a 40-plus-year-old structure. We hope it will serve as an example to other building owners on how they can achieve both cost-effective energy retrofits and spectacular new office environments.”

"What a great location, great building, great landlord, great view... and great space! This is the perfect match for our motto: 'Great People, Great Projects.'"

                -Kirk Davis, Glumac's Portland office Managing Principal

Sustainability was targeted as a primary goal for the design. Glumac partnered with Gensler’s Seattle office to ensure a clean and modern space that would perfectly integrate with the engineering systems. From the initial Eco Charrette, the goal of achieving LEED Platinum certification with an energy savings of 50% over a comparable building was set. The new floor plan is “open-office,” which reduces the need for construction materials and increases the opportunities for collaboration amongst employees.

“Our design goal was light-filled neighborhood work areas with views for every employee, which increases productivity, employee retention and attraction. Collaboration areas within the neighborhoods foster teaming and knowledge-sharing. Their space has now become a performance asset.”

                       -Chad Yoshinobu, Design Director/Principal at Gensler Seattle

The design required gutting the space, removing the ceilings and exposing the cast concrete structure - which was newly showcased and painted white to maximize the impact of daylighting from the perimeter windows. The building owner, as part of a facade upgrade, replaced the single pane exterior windows on Glumac's floor with double pane, high-efficiency glazing and added new windows above the old ceiling line, increasing total available daylighting. With optimized daylight harvesting, Glumac aims to save lighting power density by 47% from State code allowances. Lighting load is further being reduced by using:

• LEDs in over 50% of luminaires
• Tambient single-lamp task/ambient luminaires
• Vacancy and occupancy sensors for all lights
• Daylight sensors for all lights in daylight areas
• A Lutron QS System to provide wireless controls and switches for all lights and motorized blinds 
• This is the most advanced lighting control system deployed in the Pacific Northwest

Glumac also designed for maximum energy and resource savings by integrating:

• Water fixtures that use 43% less water than ASHRAE allowances
• Chilled sails to provide energy-efficient cooling
• Currently permitted to install operable windows (the first in the building) to provide employees with fresh air and improved comfort
• FSC Certified and recycled wood
• Low VOC furnishings

Dedicated crews from general contractor Walsh Construction Co., including Project Manager Jason Stegner and Superintendents Gordon Graff and Jeff Copus, successfully managed the renovation work. “The Walsh team is very proud to have worked on a significantly unique and challenging project to create an energy efficient and modern space in a 50-year-old building. The craftsmanship and quality stands as an example of the hard work and committed effort in the field by our exceptional project team and subcontractors,“ says Stegner.

Kirk Davis is thrilled to be able to "walk the talk and operate in an office environment we recommend to our clients." To make all employees always aware of our energy usage, Glumac is installing a custom energy dashboard to show real-time and past energy use. This will lend insight into identifying trends and anomalies of the heating, cooling and control systems, and give Glumac the ability to make system changes in the future in efforts to ever-improve energy usage.