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Sustainability is also a focus at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the U.S. defense and research institutions co-managed by Bechtel. Los Alamos, in New Mexico, has won numerous government awards for its efforts in pollution reduction, environmental stewardship, and sustainable building. In addition, the lab produced an oft-referenced Sustainable Design Guide that describes the issues and design process for energy-efficient buildings and the added value that sustainable design can provide in architecture, facility construction, operation, and maintenance. The laboratory’s Chemical and Metallurgical Research Replacement facility is also registered for LEED certification.
At Lawrence Livermore in California, innovative sustainable design and site planning for a water conservation test bed to harvest and reuse stormwater won a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) “best in class” award for environmental stewardship. The site has three buildings certified under LEED for Existing Buildings, including Gold level for the TeraScale Simulation supercomputing facility.
Bechtel also is walking the talk. The company has more than 60 LEED-accredited professionals and in 2009, its employees in Washington, D.C., moved into a newly redesigned office that received LEED Platinum certification.
Just a generation ago, sustainable design was considered futuristic. Today, companies like Bechtel are proving that when it comes to sustainability, the future is now.
