Washington, D.C., March 31, 2005 The trend to develop and build environmentally-friendly buildings has now transitioned to green-friendly office interiors.

Since early 2000, the U.S. Green Building Council (usgbc.org), a coalition of building industry leaders, through its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, began certifying buildings that were constructed in accordance with a defined set of environmentally-friendly standards. Despite the sometimes audible screams from many building contractors at the mere mention of "LEEDs" and its corresponding mountain of compliance-proving paperwork, green building is definitely not a fad and has now spilled all the way down to green office interiors.

Just a few short months ago (November 2004), the USGBC unveiled its LEED-"CI" standards, for "commercial interiors". Instead of running from the wave of the future, at least one D.C. area interior general contractor is setting out to embrace the green trend.

"Who would have thought," explains Rollins-PCI Construction President, Barry Lake, "when the LEED program was first launched in 1999 that over 1200 buildings and counting would have applied for certification? I doubt that any progressive developer today would consider starting a building project without attempting to achieve some level of LEED compliance." And now that the LEEDs trend has started to filter down to office interiors, Lake intends to position Rollins-PCI Construction at the forefront of the industry when it comes to developing a green office build-out capability. In partnership with their key subcontractors, the Rollins-PCI project management team is researching and implementing a reliable framework for building-out commercial interiors based on environmentally-sound practices. Beginning in April, Rollins-PCI will team up with key subcontractors, CRW Mechanical, Inc. and Direct Electric and begin making the rounds of the top architecture and design firms in the DC-Baltimore corridor in an effort to help educate this key industry group on the practical implications of LEED-CI on interior build-out contractors.

Rollins-PCI V.P. of Project Management, John Ford, explains "Architects and design firms are a consistent source of referral business for us as an interior build-out contractor and those folks have always been at the forefront when it comes to sustainable practices." Being at the front end of the build-out process when the project is in the design phase, architects can heavily influence the direction of the project. "We simply want to arm the architects and designers with information on what specific extra steps we contractors must take to meet the LEED-CI criteria and give them a good idea of the cost premium, if any, that will result," continues Ford "This allows the architect to more accurately advise their client in the early stages of an interior build-out."

As far as the practical construction implications of LEED-CI, some of the requirements are obvious whereas others are much more subtle. Rollins-PCI Project Manager, Brian Abel, explains "For demolition, we used to simply drop off a big dumpster on site, rip most of the existing walls and ceilings out rather indiscriminately and then cart the dumpster away to the landfill." As a result of LEED-CI, architects are attempting to salvage and reuse more of the existing improvements to reduce the impact on landfills. As a result, contractors like Rollins-PCI now take greater pains to be more careful during demolition especially when it comes to sorting materials that can be recycled. "These days, we are more apt to have four or five dumpsters on site to separate and sort the scrap materials during demolition since almost all of it can be recycled in some manner," according to Abel. Some behind the scenes impacts of LEED-CI are not nearly as obvious.

"We use a lot of our own in-house forces to perform the framing and drywall hanging on interiors projects," explains Ford, "Whereas we used to simply call up our drywall supplier and have the sheets of wallboard delivered the next day, we must now be careful to specifically order drywall with the proper recycled component from a specific point of origin." For the D.C.-area, Rollins-PCI is careful to ensure that one of their main drywall suppliers sources the products from a plant in Shippingport, PA. The 278 mile distance between Shippingport and Washington, D.C. is critical for picking up a LEED-CI point for sourcing materials from a regional manufacturer, being one within a 500 mile radius of the project. This requirement translates into an extra 7 - 10 days of lead time in placing the order and securing the drywall, a detail that most end users might be oblivious to, but just one example of the extra logistics that LEED-conscious contractors like Rollins-PCI pride themselves in knowing.

It seems like only a few years ago that it was a novelty for homeowners to put their extra box of recyclables at the curb next to the trash but today we do it without a second thought. For progressive commercial general contractors like Rollins-PCI Construction, green interior office build-outs are definitely not just a passing fad but the wave of the future.