CS4: Summary Paper - BEA 347, Mexico

CEE 424 - Sustainable Construction Methods

GROUP 2 - Laura Medina, Houhao Liang, Kamini Sumant Chavda, Ziwei Song
May 11th, 2018
To have a better understanding on how LEED certifications would affect project delivery, a case

study on project BEA 347 were conducted. This paper summarized the project details according

to different phases.

Introduction

BEA 347 is an office complex located in Monterrey, Mexico. It belongs to the company

Bioconstrucción y Energía Alternativa which was established in 2001. This company wanted to

be the pioneering Latin American company and leader in consulting for sustainable world-class

real estate developments. Therefore, the main reason was to make a commitment to the

environment by implementing their own product in their building. Designed by Oficina de

Arquitectura (ODA) architectural firm and completed in 2010, the 4639 sq.ft office (BEA 347) is

designed to be the headquarters for the LEED-pioneer consulting firm. Up to now, BEA has

successfully led several LEED certification processes of many high-performance buildings in

Latin America. Their goal is to transform our build environment by providing consultancy

services in Green Building, Wellness, and LEED Certification.

BEA 347 has two Platinum Certifications: New Construction v2.2 and O&M v4 (Figure 1).

Certified as Platinum in 2011, BEA 347 is the first construction to reach LEED Platinum

Certification for new constructions in Latin America. By obtaining 58 of the 69 points available

in the v2.2 scale, BEA 347 is located within the top 1% of buildings that achieve this

recognition. The second Platinum certification in 2015 (87/100) was mainly to perfectionate and

improve on the sustainable practices that already exist in the building. BEA is the first doubly

certified building LEED Platinum version v4 in the region of Latin America.

 Figure 1. LEED Certification in 2011 and 2015

Decision

LEED certifications are not new to the company Bioconstrucción y Energía Alternativa. As a

green building design company, they have finished a lot consulting projects over these years.

But, this time the project is their office complex.

As the project team believed, being leaders and pioneers in the area of sustainable design,

applying the groundbreaking concepts and strategies is always their goal. Their office building

will not be an exception in being Green. However, what makes this project so different is that

they are putting the occupants comfort in the first place instead of any of their key performance

indicators. They believed that, by following the LEED guidance, they can greatly improve their

working spaces and further improve their workers’ comfort and enhance the company’s
productivity. It’s just as what they said, ‘we knew it would pose a large challenge, but we also

realized it would have a direct impact on our company, collaborators, employees and visitors’.

Design

To comply with LEED requirements, BEA 347 focused on integrating strategies for reuse of

construction material, high performance glazing, water reuse with treatment plant and pluvial

catchment, achieving not only "reuse" the property but recycling almost 100% of the products

that make up the workplace. During their certification process for New Construction, BEA’s

main objectives where:

● Materials that could be reused.

● Paints with low content of organic compounds. volatile, which were achieved within the

limits allowed by the scale.

These two tasks were challenging since their availability in Mexico was limited. To achieve the

LEED certification, BEA focused on and implemented a series of elements that could comply

with each category:

Water Efficiency

● Use rainwater to satisfy the consumption of sanitary appliances and irrigation systems.

● Reduction of the external water consumption by the use of alternative sources of

water.

● Permanent metering of 4 sub-systems.

Sustainable Sites

● Rainwater harvesting system, composed by two tanks (capacity of 75 gallons each

 one) which has a filter to eliminate the suspended solids connected to a pipe network

which takes the rainwater to other tank that distributes the water to all the building.

● Permeable area higher than 50% of the total surface area to manage the runoff water
on site.

● Use of special protection for exterior illumination that exceed 2500 lumens to avoid
external light contamination.

● Use of only electrical equipment for most tasks in the building.

Energy & Atmosphere

● Use of photovoltaic panels, solar heater and wind turbine.

Materials & Resources

● Luminaires in the building with minimum amount of mercury.

● Material and fortuniture that would be used must have sustainable criteria.

● Recycling plan for consumables during construction and operation phases.

Indoor Environmental Quality

● HVAC system.

● Green Cleaning Policy in the building.

● Comprehensive control of pests plan in the building and outdoors.

● The BEA project has workstations designed to increase employees' comfort and
protect their physical health. By using ergonomic furniture and careful planning, the

space allows team members to avoid strain and injury.

Location & Transportation 9 Meter for hot water
1 Alternative transportation (racks 10 Grey-water treatments for
for bicycles, carpooling and public irrigation use
transportation) 11 Meter for water consumption in
sanitary equipment.
Sustainable Sites 12 Low consume equipment
2 Rainwater System (WaterSense, W.C., etc.)
3 Water Tank
4 “Heat Island” reduction Energy & Atmosphere
5 Green areas with native 13 General metering
vegetation 14 Photovoltaic panels
6 Green Roof 15 Solar heaters
16 Wind turbines
Water Efficiency 17 HVAC
7 Meter for whole-building water 18 Isolation
consumption 19 Natural and autonomous lights
8 Meter for irrigation system 20 Commissioning (monitoring
systems)
Material and Resources
21 Recycle area
22 Regional material (bamboo and
wood)
Indoor Environmental Quality
23 Good levels of illumination
24 Access mats to avoid indoor
contamination
25 Areas with controlled
illumination
26 Space free of tobacco
27 Smoking area
Innovation & Design
28 Orchard
29 Site-Preservation Plan
Construction

Once general studies about the area and the projected performance of the building were

developed, other actions started to be considered such as an annual contribution to local agency

for the conservation and renovation of green areas.

As the saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail. The project team of BEA 347 believed

planning is the key point of successfully getting a green certification. Meetings were always the

most effective way to communicate and to make sure everything is in the plan. Besides, the

company always provide sufficient ‘green training’ to their team members. All of the employees

participated on the process to fit the building for their necessities and commodity.

When it comes to the question of how did the team approach to the LEED certification, they

highlighted the importance of communication again. In any multi-disciplinary process, during

the construction, they encountered many obstacles when responsibilities began to crossover.

However, with an well-trained and highly professional project team they was able to stay

focused on their sustainable goal. Their rich experience in building high sustainability

performance building helped them implement the integrative process better. This ensured that

they only considered the best features and synergies from all team members' and stakeholders'

perspectives. It is also important to mention that they believe that the great enthusiasm from all

collaborators and employees helped in boosting the progress and encouraged the team to achieve

the goal.

To comply with one of their main goal, BEA used steel beams from a factory that was being

decommissioned and met the characteristics required for the project. They also developed a 85.9

sq.ft. area for the production of food.

Unfortunately, Mexico is a tough scenario when it comes to environmental consciousness. BEA

347 took this matter into hand and implemented innovative actions once the project was fully

constructed. They have an educational program to give guided tours to visitors in the office, and

they internally distribute a monthly bulletin to inform about the consumption and behavior of the

building to engage occupants into improving energy saving actions.

Certification

LEED Scorecard Analysis

The BEA 347 received 87 credits out of 110 possible credits and was awarded Platinum.

Considering that the site and location of the BEA 347 was carefully chosen to maximize

sustainability, they received 9 out of 10 SS credits.

Since Monterrey can reach temperatures about 105 ºF, BEA 347 lost 3 points on cooling tower

water use to save cost and receive 9 out of 12 WE credits. To achieve this, rainwater use saves

76% of water consumption, satisfying the consumption of sanitary appliances and irrigation

systems. And permanent metering of 4 sub-systems were installed in this building.

The project received 25 out of 38 possible points for Energy and Atmosphere credits. It has an

energy performance 36.6% better than similar buildings, where 13% of the energy consumption

of the building is supplied with renewable energy generated on site (photovoltaic panels, solar

heater and wind turbine).

For Material and Resources credits, the project received 6/8 credits. For this, the project utilizes

61.05% of the ongoing consumable goods and 89.43% of the electrical equipment that complies

with sustainable criteria. Luminaires in BEA 347 have minimum amount of mercury. 53.49% of

the construction products and materials and 84.62% of furniture have sustainable characteristics

as well. Another remarkable fact is that 92.14% of cleaning products and materials have

sustainable criteria and 100% of the cleaning equipment meets sustainable requirements.

Finally, in the Indoor and Environmental Quality category, BEA 347 was successfully awarded

13 out of 17 credits. Levels of natural lighting of the building are between 300 and 3,000 lx for

51.33% of regularly occupied areas.

This project receives no credits in Integrative Process, which is due the cost and the complicated

operations to achieve coordination all the needed systems.

BEA 347 has also a Well Building Standard certification.

Beyond the Certification

The benefits of pursuing LEED is more than the certificate itself. As the project team told us,

their employees and collaborators at Bioconstrucción y Energía Alternativa enjoy the work

stations that are highly connected to the exterior which brings natural light and views to their

activities. Flora and fauna – including pet turtles in one of the semi-exterior gardens – are

brought to the working areas through physical and visual connections, lowering occupant stress

levels. Well-being is also promoted through the use of standing desks and the implementation of

several active policies that foster physical activity within and outside the working environment.

One of the most remarkable things about this project was the collaborators’ availability to help in

this project, even though they were not directly involved as part of the assigned team. The

enthusiasm of all of their team helped make the new, healthier office a reality.