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VCA Green provides green building consulting and commissioning. Their mission is to help clients achieve sustainability goals along with long-term cost savings. They seek out and provide ‘Sustainable Opportunities’. I spoke with Principal Moe Fakih about where buildings sometimes go wrong and how energy modelling, rating and commissioning can help.
Green, but not green enough
VCA Green operate mostly throughout California, though Moe noted that they’ve recently gained a couple of offshore clients. He says that the Californian building codes are actually pretty good. The rules for building now, at least in their state, are pretty ‘green’, “but not green enough”. For example, there’s a requirement in California that building must be 50% more efficient than the last code cycle. With each code cycle lasting three years, there’s a good rate of improvement for all buildings.
Unless specified by special rules, buildings in California are not required to achieve a rating like LEED. In fact the relatively good standard required by the State may actually make voluntary ratings even less appealing. But Moe says that there’s still a lot of interest from their clients.
Training and Retaining
In the eight and a half years that Moe has been with the company, the team has expanded substantially. He puts this down to finding good people and emphasising ongoing training to maintain staff retention. It’s almost like you need to treat good staff like you do a good building. It’s not a case of ‘set and forget’. Buildings and people need ongoing maintenance!
Return on Investement
It’s all well and good have sustainability goals, but the outcomes need to stack up for clients. VCA Green look at the return on investment for building owners. While acknowledging that there may be some upfront costs to building better, they try to keep this to a minimum and focus on the long term.
Modelling and Reality
Modelling is helpful, but “you can never predict occupant behaviour”, says Moe. More often than not, Moe and his team find that existing buildings are using more energy than they should. This can be a result of a combination of factors. Building occupants or facility managers may override thermostats, people leave lights on where they’re not needed and sometimes people over air condition part or all of a building.
VCA Green
VCA Green has offices in Orange County and Oakland, California. Check out their services, projects and case studies on their website, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
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