GLUMAC - Engineers for a sustainable future

Glenn Claycomb, P.E., LEED^® AP, San Francisco Associate Principal

Glumac is a member of a small team helping the University of California, Santa Barbara, (UCSB) develop a Campus Sustainability Plan to be included in their new Long Range Development Plan, which will incorporate the academic and physical planning goals of the campus over the next 15 years.

Brightworks Northwest, a Portland-based firm which helps design and implement sustainability programs, assembled a team including Glumac and two specialists in environmental assessment and management systems to respond to UCSB’s request for qualifications last March. By June we were at work and in October began a series of workshops on campus. Our approach was to demonstrate the practical application of sustainability concepts to key staff who will develop goals for their own departments and collaborate on writing the Plan itself.

UCSB is already a leader in sustainability, with a strong academic program in the field and a long history of innovative resource management. In fact, when they asked for examples of other college plans to inform their work, we found only two others in the whole world, both in the draft stage.

Over 80 departmental representatives – with support from the chancellor and attendance by members of senior campus management, the faculty senate, and UC’s Office of the President – investigated the meaning of sustainability and techniques for analyzing the physical environment, built environment, purchasing and procurement, recycling, resource management and consumption, traffic, parking and transportation.

Workshop activities examined specific campus operations in the light of the four Natural Step system conditions. The Natural Step is a conceptual framework first developed in Sweden that proposes four conditions which indicate the sustainability of a system:

4            In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing concentrations of substances extracted from the earth’s crust.
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4                   In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing concentrations of substances produced by society.

4                   In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing degradation by physical means.

4                   In a sustainable society, people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.

In a sustainable Since the Campus Sustainability Plan will include tools to measure the impacts of proposed practices and provide evaluation methods for their further development, Glumac familiarized itself with current campus metrics by preparing a questionnaire, examining currently available information, and talking with people throughout the campus.

We presented several hypothetical goals, discussed the metrics that would be needed to measure progress, reported on what is already in place, and pointed out implications of the choice of goals. We noted how metrics are influenced by what they measure, and how goals are sometimes influenced by the choice of metrics.

For example, one suggested goal was that the campus consume no more energy than what falls on it in the form of sunlight. The metrics for this are clearly the amounts of sunlight and the various forms of energy consumed. Further discussion, however, considered whether the goal should be based on the theoretical total amount of solar energy or the fraction that can be collected and converted, whether the area dedicated to collection should affect the goal, and how, even, to define the area.

The training ended in December. In January smaller working groups began preparing the formal Plan and implementing short-term goals identified during the workshops. UCSB will continue assessing its metrics and developing protocols to gather, analyze, and report data. We are available, with the rest of the Brightworks Northwest team, to help them over any hurdles in the coming weeks and months.

While Glumac does not often lead this kind of high-level systems consulting, we are adept at adapting our skills to best serve our clients. Our practice already includes several core services that form elements of a good sustainability program for any organization which owns or operates buildings:

4           Building and systems surveys for energy saving measures

4                   Building Redesign of systems for higher energy efficiency

4                   Design of new or replacement energy or building management systems

4                   Energy modeling to analyze design alternatives from the standpoint of initial and operating cost

4             Commissioning and retro-commissioning

4                   Metrics analysis

4                   Workshops and presentations on sustainability and sustainable building design