Journey to Sustainability
Shortly after I arrived at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in late 1979, we received notification that the Medical School building had been declared a “sick building.” Employees complained of headaches and other symptoms. There was a real disconnect between teaching about medicine and delivering health care in a building that was not healthful.
We discovered that exhaust vents from labs had been incorrectly placed too close to air intake vents for the building’s HVAC (heating-ventilation-air-conditioning) system. The human costs to the health of people in the building were huge, and the financial cost of remediation was more than the original cost of the building.
This experience introduced me to the importance of indoor air quality and helped me realize the importance of building correctly.
It is time for stewards of the public’s money and trust to abandon the thinking that there is never enough money to do a thing right the first time. Too many experiences confirm that there is always money to fix the problems on the back end ― when the costs are far greater.
New Ways of Thinking
While at the UT Health Science Center, I was influenced by Paul Hawken’s book, The Ecology of Commerce, which led me to understand that everything we do is connected to something else, and every act of business can be sustainable and restorative.
At about the same time, my Chief Facilities Officer and I were introduced to the tenets of systems thinking, organizational learning and The Natural Step by authorities such as Karl-Henrik Robert, Peter Senge and Amory Lovins, as well as Paul Hawken. We were able to see clearly that the university's mission of health could be addressed as sustainability, which we defined as:
"Meeting the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
The principles helped us prevent, not create, illness and economic burdens and to think in long-range terms about what we were leaving behind. Sustainability could permeate everything we did.
We offered free workshops and seminars on The Natural Step to students, faculty, staff, vendors and the community. By inviting vendors to our programs, we created a collaborative process that enabled us to contract for sustainable goods and services.
Building Green
I began to build on those understandings in making the case for the largest academic green building in the Southwest. We determined that we could construct the much-needed School of Nursing and Student Community Center, while preserving a healthful environment and sustaining and enhancing human and natural resources.
Principles of sustainability guided us in meeting our fiduciary responsibilities that did not end with the building’s design and construction costs. These costs represent less than 20 percent of lifetime building costs.
The design team did a great deal of modeling to meet the performance goals set by the university ― related to site development, natural ventilation, daylighting and user-controlled thermal comfort. We looked at material selection very carefully to assure we would meet our targets for gold LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. Wherever possible, we far exceeded common green building standards in water use, energy reduction and recycled content.
The occupants were intimately involved in the building's planning. The resulting structure provided a productive and comfortable atmosphere, while protecting occupant health and well-being.
The UT Health Science Center now proudly boasts a hallmark to environmentally sound, commercial success in its 195,000-square-foot School of Nursing and Student Community Center. This building is not only good for health and the environment; it is good for the bottom line. The commercial viability of the project will continue to prove its benefits over the years through reduced operational and maintenance costs.
Disaster Resistance
During the design of the nursing school building, in June 2001, Tropical Storm Allison dumped heavy rains on Houston ― up to 36 inches in some areas of the city. The storm left an estimated 10 million gallons of water in the basement and ground floors of the Medical School, destroying computers and equipment and killing nearly 5,000 research animals. Eventual recovery and restoration from $155 million in total damages took six years.
Lessons from that disaster were incorporated into the design for the new nursing school building. That experience also informed my approach to beautiful, sustainable, efficient and disaster-resistant homes built by my former company, Sustainable Building Solutions.
The Human Elements
At the same time that we focused our planning, construction and maintenance on sustainability and reduced long-term costs, I was also searching for a more efficient and effective manner to lead my 850-person Administration and Finance staff.
A Steven Covey seminar in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” convinced me that this training could facilitate getting individuals, departments and schools to work together for the good of the Health Science Center. We offered training first to Administration and Finance and then to employees throughout the university, followed by additional training in Continuous Quality Improvement and Steven Covey’s “Principle-Centered Leadership.”
In the face of increasing financial pressures and rising customer expectations, Administration and Finance (A&F) implemented a simplification/continuous improvement process that permanently redistributed $2.5 million from the A&F budget to core university mission endeavors. These economies were achieved through attrition management and work redeployments, NOT layoffs.
Another important step in optimizing our people resources was the adoption of Profiles International assessment tools to facilitate effective and productive recruitment, utilization and development of our staff. Factors related to our decision to adopt such a tool were:
- Additional compliance requirements on virtually every aspect of our operations.
- Salary and benefit expenses equal to approximately 70 percent of annual operating expenses.
- High staff turnover rates.
- High cost of developing new employees.
- Different employee skills and personal styles needed by different hiring managers.
Working Principles
To discuss your journey to sustainability, contact 713-703-7300 or john@verdecapitalresources.com
My continuing commitment is to teams that:
- Treat each other with respect and dignity.
- Communicate clearly.
- Collaborate and share.
- Learn from mistakes.
- Employ both high touch and high tech.
- Seek diversity of input.
- Encourage exploration and innovation.
- Maintain flexibility of dollars and resources to meet the tasks.
- Value final outcomes (such as practicing health professionals), rather than outputs (such as number of courses).
- Focus on long-term or lifetime costs, rather than just the initial capital costs of construction.
- Set high goals.
If anyone should have facilities that inspire and promote well-being, it should be health care and education organizations.
Being prudent in terms of money, people and the natural world in which we live, we send a message to our supporters, our students, our patients and their families. Not only will we provide a good education and healing care today, but our lean, responsive approach will also provide benefits for years to come.