Since buying and merging two Frederick-based interior build-out construction companies last June, Lake has made a concerted effort to put the new company, Rollins-PCI Construction of Mount Airy, at the forefront of the green building trend.”

Lake -- who, as president, helped the 15-person company more than double its sales to between $6 million and $7 million last year -- has begun selling clients on the benefits of green buildings, which are designed and built to be environmentally friendly.”

Green clients would spend more in up-front costs in order to save more down the road. "There would be an increase of maybe 5 or 10 percent in construction costs," said Lake. "The materials wouldn't really cost more. The increase probably would be a little bit in labor and management."”

The increased labor costs can result from the need to separate post-demolition materials into recyclable and non-recyclable piles. Other increases, Lake said, could come from the management of additional paperwork that would be required for LEED certification.

Almost five years ago, the U.S. Green Building Council in Washington, D.C., published a series of guidelines called The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System, a voluntary, national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings, and for promoting green buildings.

The council, a nonprofit coalition of more than 4,800 contractors, developers, engineers, building owners and others, hopes such standards will lead to a healthier workplace. Lake speculates that this will be analogous to the removal of asbestos from buildings in the 1970s and '80s, where a decrease in employee sicknesses coincided with the removal of the offending chemical.

As of October, there were 137 LEED certified buildings and more than 1,200 other facilities nationwide that had applied for LEED status. Cities such as Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Boston have either adopted LEED standards for their new public buildings, or have passed tax credits for those companies that build to the LEED standards.

Noting what has begun happening in other cities, Lake pointed out that government agencies have taken up a "practice-what-we-preach philosophy" in pushing for green buildings, and he sees that as his biggest immediate market. "All of Rollins-PCI's work has been private-sector," Lake said. "You can't be a balanced company [in this area] unless you're doing government work."

Lake admits that this is a vision for the future, but he doesn't feel that future is too far away. "You could probably make the case [that this will catch on] in the next three years based on what happened with the original LEED System. Three years from now contracting [without meeting LEED standards] could be more the exception than the norm."

For now, Lake is focused on education and breaking into government contracting. "We're going to go out and educate potential clients on what they can do," said Lake, who pointed out that the new standards called for paints and carpet glues to contain fewer toxins.

The green building council said the system was developed to codify and promote green building practices, recognize environmental leadership in the building industry, stimulate competition, raise consumer awareness and transform the market.

The original LEED system deals exclusively with the building structure, so it does not affect contractors like Rollins-PCI that only do the interiors of a commercial property. In November, however, the USGBC developed its first draft of a LEED system for interior buildouts.

"The USGBC is pushing for contractors to be more environmentally friendly in commercial building," Lake said. "... For us, those standards touch on the three biggest elements of a buildout: electrical, mechanical and heating ventilation and air conditioning, and plumbing."

Lake has been accumulating information and educating both himself and his subcontractors on what it will take to meet the LEED standards.

Currently, Lake said, "people are not calling and demanding [green interior buildouts], but if customers want to be good stewards to the environment, we can help them do that."

Rollins and PCI, both founded in 1989, were sister general contracting companies focused on corporate office interior build-outs in the Washington area, until they became one company when Lake bought them. Their recent jobs include new Chevy Chase Bank branches in the Crystal City corridor revitalization and Reagan National and Dulles airports; drywall and ceiling packages for television channel Univision's new corporate offices in Washington; and government contractor Codan's new facilities in Manassas.