YOUR ROADMAP TO
GREEN CONTRACTING
Getting into green contracting is all about education. Here are some resources to consider.
The industry’s associations are leaders in
this field. One of the best is the Mechanical Contractors Association of America,
which has thrown itself headlong into green
construction because of the leadership of
past president Dave Kruse, L.J. Kruse Co.,
Berkeley, Calif. MCAA has produced an outstanding Website, www.greencontractors.us.
On the site, MCAA notes that no one organization can
go it alone, and lists the major players in the green building industry.
Central to any discussion of green building is the U.S.
Green Building Council. MCAA, Mechanical Service Contractors Association, Plumbing Contractors Association
and the Mechanical Contracting Education and Research
Foundation are each members of the USGBC, as are many
mechanical contracting rms. Information about membership is available at www.usgbc.org.
A major bene t of membership in USGBC is participation in the ongoing development of the LEED rating system.
Members are eligible to serve on LEED or USGBC committees, although anyone who registers on the USGBC’s Website
is eligible to submit comments on proposed changes to the
rating system.
e Greenbuild expo sponsored by the USGBC is a major
event in the green building world. e next Greenbuild show
will be held in Boston in November. e show has dozens of
educational o erings and hundreds of exhibitors. ere’s a
lot of stu there that’s non-germane such as green roofs and
window systems, but major plumbing and heating manufacturers are there as well. Greenbuild is the big kahuna of
sustainable construction shows and one’s green educational
journey isn’t complete until one has traveled to the Mecca
that is Greenbuild. More information is available at www.
greenbuildexpo.org.
The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating & Air-Conditioning Engineers has been writing the standards for
energy e ciency in buildings for decades. ASHRAE plans
to force designers to make buildings more energy-e cient
by dramatically increasing the e ciency requirements in its
Standard 90.1, Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings. e 2010 version will require 30%
percent more efficiency than the 2004 edition. ASHRAE
has said that the next version will require 50% percent more
e ciency, and the version a er that will mandate 70%. Addi-
tional information
is available at www.
engineeringforsus-tainability.org and
www.ashrae.org.
In addition the society is working on a new green building
standard, Standard 189P, (SPC 189.1) Standard for the Design
of High-Performance, Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings. Additional information is available at
http://spc189.ashraepcs.org.
Because somebody has to do the actual work, MCAA
has partnered with the Green Mechanical Council, educational accreditation rm HVAC Excellence, and the United
Association of Plumbers and Pipe tters to train journeymen
and apprentices in green service and installation methods.
Additional information is available at www.greenmech.org
and www.ua.org.
One of our favorite green training programs is GreenPlumbersUSA ( www.greenplumbersusa.com), that’s
administered by Steve Lehtonen, executive director of
the California Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors.
GreenPlumbersUSA is a national training and accreditation
program for plumbers that has the goal of creating a green
army servicing and installing water-efficient and sustainable products. e organization’s goal is a complete culture
change in the plumbing industry. The training consists of
ve courses over 32 hours that cover Climate Care, Caring
for Our Water, Solar Hot Water, Water E cient Technology and an Inspection Report Service. e organization is a
nonpro t that seeks funding from donations and grants. It
holds training programs all over the country and the educational programs are free to plumbers.
Another green building rating system that is somewhat
in competition with USGBC is Green Globes, administered
by the The Green Building Initiative ( www.thegbi.org).
e Green Globes system is a green management tool that
includes an assessment protocol, rating system and guide for
integrating environmentally friendly design into commercial buildings. Once complete, it also provides a third-party
review and assessment of the project’s sustainability. It’s an
online interactive, exible and, GBI emphasizes, a ordable
approach to environmental design.
GBI also helped the National Association of Homebuild-ers develop its Model Green Home Building Guidelines
( www.nahb.org/publication_details.aspx?publicationI
