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December 23, 2009
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NEW ENERGY RATING JOINS THE FRAY
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| Happy holidays to everyone. We're on a reduced publication schedule for the next week. So if you don't hear from us, don't immediately add us to your wish list. We'll be back. |
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| The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), is developing a program to assess energy use in commercial buildings; the 52k-member technical society, in over 130 countries, has Hines on board in the pilot program. |
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Hines SVP Clayton Ulrich invited us into his office for a conference call with ASHRAE government affairs chief Ryan Colker, who couldn’t fly in from DC (something about too much snow; we didn’t really understand). Ryan tells us ASHRAE’s Building Energy Quotient, or Building EQ, will improve analysis of building energy efficiency. He says owners and managers want to build efficiently, but need better tools to quantify how. The Building EQ provides a run-down of energy use, both as designed and as operated.
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Above is ASHRAE’s actual scorecard for its HQ. Assessors will give both a label and a certificate with in-depth attributes of the building, suggestions for improvement, info on peak load, and more. The analysis can be done on buildings in the design phase (ASHRAE created an enhanced modeling program) or ones that have been operating at least 12 months. Ryan tells us it provides unique feedback. Assessors will look primarily at energy bills but will also do site evals to discuss practical recommendations, such as lighting upgrades and revisions in operational schedules.
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ASHRAE plans to run piloting from late January through summer. One building committed to the pilot you might recognize: UT Health Science Center’s Sarofim Research Building in the Med Center. Clayton tells us Hines is planning to evaluate the program in five of its buildings. To ensure EPA’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager is leveraged by the Building EQ program, Hines invited Energy Star leadership to participate in the program eval.
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The program will be voluntary and will be helpful primarily in marketing and consumer knowledge; however, where energy use disclosure is mandatory (Washington State, California, Austin, and more in the works), the Building EQ will meet that requirement. Side note: We may be jealous of Ryan’s snowy winter, but he’s looking forward to an upcoming vacation in the Caribbean to escape it all. (And he sent us this pic in front of the White House from a warmer time.) We suppose the snow is always whiter on the other side.
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DANCING WITH THE CONTRACTORS
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We like hard hats, and we like ballet, so we really liked going by the WS Bellows Construction site for the Houston Ballet Center for Dance downtown. Project manager Lorrie Dancer Foreman (that really is her middle name) tells us it’s one of the few projects that broke ground this summer, and the first floor will be done by year’s end. The facility will more than double Houston Ballet’s current space, and will have a skybridge to the Wortham Theater Center (that big building behind Lorrie where ballets are performed) to facilitate transportation of costumes, props, and dancers.
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When completed in spring ’11, the center will be the largest of its kind in the US: 115k SF, six stories, nine dance studios, a “black box” dance lab, dorms for dancers, and admin and support facilities. The lot used to be a bank drive-thru, and Gensler architect Marshall Strabala retained this concept by having a “drive-thru” under the building where parents can drop off ballerinas for lessons. Lorrie confides the biggest challenge was budget: originally, it was $20M over a $36M budget. compartmentalizing the spending for each aspect of the building, changing materials, and a weak market helped her get it $3.5M under, while retaining every SF of program space.
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Other than this, Lorrie, who has $2B experience in construction, with no litigation, is launching her own construction and real estate consulting firm, Venturi Outcomes. She tells us Venturi started officially on Sep 1 and specializes in solving problems in projects underway or in design. She currently has 4 projects in different stages and is working on a committee to bring Expo 2020 to Houston, as well as one to put movie studios in the Astrodome.
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| Send story ideas to Catie Brubake, catie@bisnow.com |
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This newsletter is a journalistic news source which accepts no payment for featured interviews. It is supported by conventional advertisers clearly identified in the right hand column. You have been selected to receive it either through prior contact or professional association. If you have received it in error, please accept our apologies and unsubscribe at bottom of the newsletter. © 2009, Bisnow on Business, Inc., 1323 Connecticut Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036. All rights reserved.
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