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HDR: Big and Green. Very Green!

True or false: Large companies have a more difficult time greening themselves?

Penny Bonda -- Interior Design, 4/21/2008 12:00:00 AM

It's tempting to think that a smaller organization's agility would lend itself to more profound change until you look closely at HDR. This Omaha-based design firm is a big player, ranking seventh in the 2008 Interior Design's Top 100 Giants and first in the 2007 Interior Design Giants in Health Care. A winner of numerous awards, the 90-year-old firm employing more than 6,800 professionals in more than 160 locations worldwide is known for its many accomplishments—in architecture, engineering and interior design. But, in the green world, HDR does not immediately come to mind as a leader in sustainability. It should.

Click on its web site and the firm's commitment to sustainability is immediately clear. Or, consider these stats:

206 LEED Accredited Professionals
Over 10.6 million square feet of LEED registered and certified projects
49 LEED registered projects
8 LEED certified projects
2 Platinum rated projects
2 Gold rated projects
1 LEED for Neighborhood Development pilot project

HDR was the first architecture/engineering firm to join USGBC and boasts Michaella Wittmann, an early green pioneer, as its director of sustainability. Starting in 1995—before LEED—Wittmann presented the idea to management that addressing sustainability in its projects might provide value to their clients and to the firm. Under her leadership, and with an extremely supportive management team, Wittmann started HDR's Sustainable Design Solutions program and began incorporating sustainability into its business plan, well before most other firms large or small were paying attention.

Sustainability has continued to be a priority moving forward and led to the development of a vision statement, which provides an umbrella mission for sustainability that incorporates operating principles, strategic direction and implementation plans. It is what a visioning statement should be: carefully crafted philosophies—"We . . . face problems and challenges right now related to sustainability, climate, and carbon," clearly identified goals—"HDR should strive to offer our clients the best possible economic, social, and environmental value by delivering integrated sustainable solutions," and specific internal and external strategies that will "each year between now and 2012, reduce our own environmental impact and help our employees learn how to integrate sustainability into their project work."

What separates HDR's sustainability statement from many others is that behind all the rhetoric are initiatives—some long-standing and some newly developed—that articulate very specific programs and processes. For example, HDR has maintained its Sustainable Product Database since 1999. An internal tool that is also made available to client teams, the database is, in essence, an online green library listing properties, certifications and environment concerns for over 1,400 building materials and products. It is updated and kept current by project teams as they gain experience both good and bad with different resources, all under the direction of the database's originator, sustainable materials manager, Bruce Maine.

To insure that the staff stays current in evolving green knowledge and technologies, HDR has a full-time sustainable training and education manager who works both within the company and with clients to develop and deliver sustainable training programs. Mona Eigbrett, a former high school teacher, has trained more than 3500 people nationwide regarding sustainable business practices, including LEED trainings both onsite and via video teleconferencing.

HDR also has a full-time corporate sustainability manager whose responsibility it is to work at reducing the environmental footprint of its business practices—programming all printers and copiers to default to double-sided printing, for example, and weaning employees away from plastic water bottles and disposable dishes. Operational issues such as recycling become complicated because HDR's 160 offices are located in as many different communities, all with their own programs.

There's also a national sustainability program coordinator to support HDR's work across a company-wide sustainable solutions program. Each of the disciplines (architecture, engineering and interiors), and many of the practice specialty areas have individuals dedicated to sustainability, including directors of sustainable transportation, development, water resources and community planning. The Sustainable Solutions Leadership team, comprised of nine individuals, meets regularly and provides direction for these cross-company efforts. One of the key areas of focus this year is its carbon, climate, and greenhouse gas practice group.

HDR uses a "balanced scorecard" approach to execute its strategic plans. Using performance measures that are directly linked to strategy is a fundamental concept in balanced scorecard theory. Applying common performance measures throughout the firm better aligns actions to strategy and helps make strategy everyone's job. The performance measures in HDR's plan are balanced to achieve results in each of four strategic themes: employer, organization, consultant, and investment of choice, ultimately leading to the primary goal to be One Great, Sustainable Company. According to Wittmann, "one of the key initiatives in our 2012 plan, which is what we're currently working on, is sustainability. As a part of the sustainability initiative, we will be developing a balanced scorecard metric to help us track how we are moving towards sustainability both in the way we deliver projects and in our own business practices."

This highly focused level of commitment to sustainability across-the-board in a single firm defines HDR as atypical. It's also what draws good people to it. Jean Hansen recently joined the firm as its sustainable interiors manager. A 25-year industry veteran, Hansen will be responsible for advancing HDR's sustainability initiatives in project and research work for healthcare, commercial and institutional environments.

"I was drawn to the firm because I wanted to join an organization that supports the sustainable work I want to do," Hansen says. "The sustainable effort is so huge at HDR and across many segments. It embraces sustainable interiors but in the context of what the entire firm is doing. I really like that."

Hansen also commented on her ability, both encouraged and supported, to work on initiatives that may not be billable but will add to the firm's and the industry's body of knowledge—a definite attraction for HDR in bringing her on staff. Hanson has been involved in the development of the Green Guide for Healthcare and as a core committee member for the development of LEED for Healthcare. More recently she has become involved in the BIFMA Sustainable Standards and is a committee member of the ACT Sustainable Textiles Standard.

Hansen has also served on Kaiser Permanente's High Performance Building Committee for eight years working on market transformation and materials evaluation for interior use in health care facilities. In October 2007 the Healthy Building Network and Healthcare Without Harm published The Future of Fabric (pdf), a white paper she co-authored on fabrics as they are used in contemporary healthcare settings. Next up, a furniture research project for Kaiser.

Within HDR Hansen will work through the sustainable interiors focus group to educate the company's interior designers throughout the firm, support and provide them with the tools they need to do their work. Together with focus groups representing the other disciplines, she will develop guidelines to assist projects to do their best green work, both within LEED and beyond.

"HDR is pretty far ahead of the curve in tackling sustainability," states Hansen. "We have 18 full-time sustainable design solutions staff, including experts in indoor air quality, specifications and landscape architecture. Other firms simply can't match us."

Perhaps, when it comes to sustainability, size has nothing to do with it. In fact, in HDR's case, it's the people. Definitely.