CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee announced today its certification as a LEED Gold campus, established by the U.S. Green Building Council and verified by the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI). LEED is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings.
BlueCross’ headquarters, totaling 950,000 square feet of office space, is the largest LEED Gold corporate campus in Tennessee, and the second largest in the nation.
To earn LEED certification, performance measurements must be achieved in five key areas of environmental and human health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.
According to Bob Worthington, chief strategy officer for BlueCross, the desire from the beginning was to incorporate certain sustainable design attributes in the new corporate campus.
“Our master planning goals always included sustainability, innovation and wellness,” said Worthington. “That translates into not only better controlling cost and increased efficiency, but it also means transforming our work environment to better meet the needs of our employees, members and the health care community.”
The Cameron Hill campus:
- Reduces energy costs by more than 20 percent or $265,000 annually than if the project had been built to minimum code standards.
- Saves 20 million gallons of water annually by using ultra low-flow plumbing fixtures, a water-efficient irrigation system and low water-use plants.
- Improves indoor air quality for employees by employing an underfloor air distribution system and specifying ventilation rates that are 30 percent higher than required by code.
- Decreases storm water runoff by 15 percent.
- Reduces global warming impacts and ozone depletion through the use of a more efficient cooling system that doesn’t use ozone depleting chemicals.
“BlueCross’ LEED certification demonstrates tremendous green building leadership,” said Rick Fedrizzi, President, CEO and founding chair, U.S. Green Building Council. “The urgency of USGBC’s mission has challenged the industry to move faster and reach further than ever before, and BlueCross serves as a prime example of just how much we can accomplish.”
Major partners responsible for the BlueCross corporate campus include architectural firms Duda/Paine, headquartered in Durham, N.C.; HKS, headquartered in Dallas, Texas; Artech Design Group, headquartered in Chattanooga, Tenn; tvsdesign in Atlanta, Ga.; Tune Design in Chattanooga, Tenn. and HGOR, a planning and landscaping design firm out of Atlanta, with local partnership from Sawyer Landscaping.
Green Building Services in Portland, Ore. served as the LEED consultant on the project.
Skanska, a world leader in green construction, along with EMJ Corporation and H.J. Russell & Company, served as the construction management team. Jones Lang LaSalle, formerly The Staubach Company, a national real estate consulting firm with significant LEED experience, served as the project manager for the entire building process.
About BlueCross
BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee offers its customers peace of mind through affordable solutions for health and healing, life and living. Founded in 1945, the Chattanooga-based company is focused on reinventing the health plan for its 3 million members in Tennessee and across the country. Through its integrated health management approach, BlueCross provides patient-centric products and services that drive health improvement and positively impact health care quality and value. BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Inc. is an independent licensee of the BlueCross BlueShield Association. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.bcbst.com.
About USGBC
The Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Green Building Council is committed to a prosperous and sustainable future for our nation through cost-efficient and energy-saving green buildings. With a community comprising 78 local affiliates, more than 20,000 member companies and organizations, and more than 100,000 LEED Accredited Professionals, USGBC is the driving force of an industry that is projected to soar to $60 billion by 2010. The USGBC leads an unlikely diverse constituency of builders and environmentalists, corporations and nonprofit organizations, elected officials and concerned citizens, and teachers and students. Buildings in the United States are responsible for 39% of CO2 emissions, 40% of energy consumption, 13% water consumption and 15% of GDP per year, making green building a source of significant economic and environmental opportunity. Greater building efficiency can meet 85% of future U.S. demand for energy, and a national commitment to green building has the potential to generate 2.5 million American jobs.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
7 Tips for Installing Moisture Barriers
If you took a poll of building envelope and construction forensic experts, it's likely that moisture barriers would be high on the list of most poorly understood products used in wall assemblies. Besides deciding which type of barrier to use under various climate conditions, Building Teams must confront the nasty matter of how to install them correctly.
| Aug 11, 2010
Recycled Pavers Elevate Rooftop Patio
The new three-story building at 3015 16th Street in Minot, N.D., houses the headquarters of building owner Investors Real Estate Trust (IRET), as well as ground-floor retail space and 71 rental apartments. The 215,000-sf mixed-use building occupies most of the small site, while parking takes up the remainder.
| Aug 11, 2010
America's Greenest Hospital
Hospitals are energy gluttons. With 24/7/365 operating schedules and stringent requirements for air quality in ORs and other clinical areas, an acute-care hospital will gobble up about twice the energy per square foot of, say, a commercial office building. It is an achievement worth noting, therefore, when a major hospital achieves LEED Platinum status, especially when that hospital attains 14 ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Research Facility Breaks the Mold
In the market for state-of-the-art biomedical research space in Boston's Longwood Medical Area? Good news: there are still two floors available in the Center for Life Science | Boston, a multi-tenant, speculative high-rise research building designed by Tsoi/Kobus & Associates, Boston, and developed by Lyme Properties, Hanover, N.
| Aug 11, 2010
Piano's 'Flying Carpet'
Italian architect Renzo Piano refers to his $294 million, 264,000-sf Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago as a “temple of light.” That's all well and good, but how did Piano and the engineers from London-based Arup create an almost entirely naturally lit interior while still protecting the priceless works of art in the Institute's third-floor galleries from dangerous ultravio...
| Aug 11, 2010
3 Hospitals, 3 Building Teams, 1 Mission: Optimum Sustainability
It's big news in any city when a new billion-dollar hospital is announced. Imagine what it must be like to have not one, not two, but three such blockbusters in the works, each of them tracking LEED-NC Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. That's the case in San Francisco, where three new billion-dollar-plus healthcare facilities are in various stages of design and constructi...
| Aug 11, 2010
Precast All the Way
For years, precast concrete has been viewed as a mass-produced product with no personality or visual appeal—the vanilla of building materials. Thanks to recent technological innovations in precast molds and thin veneers, however, that image is changing. As precast—concrete building components that are poured and molded offsite—continues to develop a vibrant personality all it...
| Aug 11, 2010
Great Solutions: Green Building
27. Next-Generation Green Roofs Sprout up in New York New York is not particularly known for its green roofs, but two recent projects may put the Big Apple on the map. In spring 2010, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts will debut one of the nation's first fully walkable green roofs. Located across from the Juilliard School in Lincoln Center's North Plaza, Illumination Lawn will consist ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Idea Center at Playhouse Square: A better idea
Through a unique partnership between a public media organization and a performing arts/education entity, a historic building in the heart of downtown Cleveland has been renovated as a model of sustainability and architectural innovation. Playhouse Square, which had been working for more than 30 years to revitalize the city's arts district, teamed up with ideastream, a newly formed media group t...
| Aug 11, 2010
Pioneer Courthouse: Shaking up the court
In the days when three-quarters of America was a wild, lawless no-man's land, Pioneer Courthouse in Portland, Ore., stood out as a symbol of justice and national unity. The oldest surviving federal structure in the Pacific Northwest and the second-oldest courthouse west of the Mississippi, Pioneer Courthouse was designed in 1875 by Alfred Mullett, the Supervising Architect of the Treasury.
