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The VAI project team – including Sam Pinto, Jim McCarty and Bill Culhane – said for a research lab the scale of VAI to undertake such an ambitious LEED Platinum certification is unprecedented in Michigan and puts the facility in rare company even nationwide. PHOTO: JOE BOOMGAARD

By Joe Boomgaard | MiBiz
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GRAND RAPIDS — In an era when LEED buildings are a ubiquitous part of the West Michigan landscape, Van Andel Institute’s recent LEED platinum facility stands above the rest, based on the complexity of the project, the level of certification it achieved and the best practices engineering that went into the project.

“For this building to get platinum, it’s huge. In Michigan, it’s huge,” James McCarty, sustainable programs manager for Fishbeck, Thompson, Carr & Huber Inc., the LEED administrator on the project, told MiBiz. “And it doesn’t scream, ‘I’m a LEED building.’ It’s just a good building, and it’s LEED, by the way. I can’t praise this building enough. I’ve worked with world famous architects on projects, but this one is the best. I don’t think people appreciate the significance of platinum.”

In April, the U.S. Green Building Council certified the $178 million, 8-story, 240,000-square-foot Phase II VAI building as LEED platinum, the organization’s highest level of certification. But the project — a mix of offices and labs and other uses — didn’t start out with LEED in mind.

“When we sat down with David Van Andel on Halloween of 2005 and we talked to him about his goals for this project, one was to incorporate sustainable building practices into the project,” said Bill Culhane, VAI’s owner’s representative. “At that point, we asked, ‘What about LEED certification?’ His statement was that he was not as concerned about certification as he was about doing it right. But as we looked at all the things we could do in our grasp, the best engineering practices, we said, ‘We’re there, certainly at the certified level.’ We started out with the intention of doing the right thing and the recognition came as a byproduct of that.”

Much had changed since the first phase of the VAI project was completed. The building technology had come a long way, not to mention sustainable materials became more cost-efficient and available. A big difference in this phase was the availability of energy-saving opportunities, said Sam Pinto, facilities director at VAI. The addition included a day-lighting system in the café and occupancy sensors in the lab and equipment rooms to turn off the lights when the rooms aren’t in use. Conference rooms are all tied together with Steelcase’s RoomWizard technology.

Another key challenge for the project was balancing the needs for ventilation with protecting occupants and the work going on in the labs. The ultimate design included air sampling equipment in the rooms and labs that detects a higher level of carbon dioxide or chemicals in the air and kicks on the ventilation system to purge the air that’s in the space.

“We wanted to take advantage of the technology that was available,” Pinto said.

Rather than have the ventilation equipment running all of the time, studies showed that they weren’t needed about 95 percent of the time and that the systems could run at a lower exchange rate.

“It helps lower the per-square-foot energy costs,” McCarty said. “It’s an investment in the future.”

The facility also incorporated a partial green roof for stormwater management, a roof-mounted, 30-kilowatt hour solar photovoltaic system, locker room facilities to encourage staff to use alternative transportation, nearby underground parking ramps, and low-flow water fixtures, among others.

Pinto and his team also spent time in the first phase labs studying and monitoring energy usage, an approach that led to “right-sizing” some of the mechanical systems and eliminating a new chiller.

“We got some big savings from a couple-weeklong exercise,” he said of the study. “Doing the right thing led us to achieving goals in the process.”

In his role, McCarty and his team at FTC&H reviewed all the specs for the project, and their questions and recommendations also helped drive some sustainable decisions. As an example, Pinto said the original plans called for the use of vinyl flooring in the labs similar to what was used in the first phase. Every year, the flooring needed to be stripped and refinished, which posed a difficult scheduling issue for the busy labs and an air quality issue for the employees. McCarty’s team recommended VAI look at several options, and they ended up going with a long-lasting rubber flooring that doesn’t require floor finishing.

“From our standpoint, it reduced the labor that we needed to employ to do maintenance on the floors in our labs,” Pinto said.

McCarty said the recommendations FTC&H made never forced Pinto into a decision of accepting sustainable options. Rather, he said the recommendations were made with the facilities team in mind. “If it’s not a help to Sam, it’s not helping the building,” he said. “Some things (that led to LEED points) just kind of happened through best practice engineering. It’s the right sense of value engineering.”

The team also made many “right” decisions that didn’t garner the project any LEED points at all, Pinto and McCarty said. As MiBiz previously reported in 2008, the project team went almost exclusively to an electronic Microsoft Sharepoint system to share and markup documents, which saved it from $500,000 to $750,000 in paper and shipping costs, the organization said at the time.

“The LEED program is more geared toward office buildings. The lab is a much more challenging environment to achieve these sorts of ratings. Primarily, we’re here to do research, to protect the research and the people doing the research — we’re not (actively) looking to save resources or energy,” Pinto said.

“It was a big undertaking to have gone for LEED,” McCarty added.

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• carr
• david van andel
• fishbeck
• grand rapids
• huber
• james mccarty
• leed buildings
• sam pinto
• thompson
• van andel institute