%0 Journal Article
%T A Framework to Reconcile Green Goals with Budget Reality
%A Rachel Mosier
%A Douglas D. Gransberg
%J ISRN Construction Engineering
%D 2013
%R 10.1155/2013/656742
%X A public agency that decides to implement green design and construction features in its capital improvement program is actually adding an undetermined incremental cost to the initial cost of public buildings. Past research has portrayed these costs as a percentage increase, essentially creating an overall contingency for green buildings, but no work has been done to quantify the incremental cost on a building's actual design program that can be assigned directly to the project budget. This research sought to provide an objective approach to estimating sustainable design and proposes a framework for estimating the initial capital costs of sustainable building design and construction as measured by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification program. The framework allows tracking of costs during design and can be utilized for estimating future projects. The framework is developed using case study analysis of green building projects in OK City, Oklahoma. The paper concludes that the cost of ¡°going green¡± can be estimated as a unit price basis as a cost per LEED credit. The proposed framework can be used by any public agency to determine the additional cost of LEED certification and for budgeting future projects. 1. Introduction To design and build public buildings that are more sustainable and have less impact on the environment often adds a marginal additional first cost that public agencies have been hesitant to pay. In municipal capital improvement programs, the aversion to increased cost was exacerbated by the fact that funding often is obtained by selling bonds to cover the design and costs of the project and it is difficult to determine exactly how much additional cost must be add to historical costs to ensure that sufficient funding is obtained in a given project¡¯s bond sale [1]. Green Building proponents such as the US Green Building Council (USGBC) justify the increase in design and construction costs financially by citing offsetting savings in life cycle costs from the green building¡¯s reduced energy and utility consumption. The consideration of life cycle costs is typically done during the design phase as a part of a value engineering effort [2], which occurs after the budget is fixed based on the completed municipal bond sale. However, the resulting increase in the construction cost to enhance sustainability could jeopardize project progress in one of two ways if the amount of available municipal bond funding does not cover the final as-designed cost of the constructed building First, the project may be delayed for
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.construction.engineering/2013/656742/