Stanford University
OP-2: Building Design and Construction

New construction and major renovation projects on the Stanford campus must comply with California Title-24 and California's Green Building Standards, as well as sustainability standards imposed by local jurisdictions. Therefore, a LEED-NC equivalency analysis is performed on each such project.

Stanford's Department of Project Management (http://dpm.stanford.edu) is responsible for the development, design and construction of major capital projects at Stanford University. DPM reports to the Associate Vice President for Academic Projects and Operations within Land, Buildings, and Real Estate, and currently includes a staff of 28 professionals with backgrounds in architecture, engineering, construction and cost management. These professionals serve as Project Managers and Project Engineers, Quality Assurance Field Inspectors, and Project Coordinators, who work as a project team that involves multiple stakeholders to ensure the successful delivery of facilities that support the University’s academic mission. Together with its colleagues in the departments of Sustainability and Energy Management (http://sem.stanford.edu) and Buildings and Ground Maintenance (http://bgm.stanford.edu), strive to employ life cycle cost analysis and sustainability measures in the delivery of all capital projects.

For more information, please visit the following sites:
http://lbre.stanford.edu/dpm/PDP_Process
http://sustainable.stanford.edu/guidelines
http://maps.stanford.edu/fdg_available

The Knight Management Center (Graduate School of Business) was certified LEED-NC Platinum -- 360,000 sq-ft.

Brief project notes for the buildings included in this inventory can be found online on the Department of Project Management website (http://lbre.stanford.edu/dpm/our_projects).

Brief project notes for the buildings included in this inventory can be found online on the Department of Project Management website (http://lbre.stanford.edu/dpm/our_projects).

Please note that Stanford does not have a blanket policy that requires LEED certification, but rather, guidelines with equivalent standards and an emphasis on prioritizing selection of the most appropriate high-performance features for a particular building function. On every project Stanford allocates budget to include high-efficiency transformers, energy management systems, and recycled water systems. Each new project targets 30% below Title 24 and 25% below code allowed water consumption. The decision of whether or not to seek formal certification lies with the particular school or department for whom the new building is intended.

In the majority of such instances over the past three years (the 850,000 GSF of new building space addressed in this credit), however, the decision was made not to pursue certification under LEED-NC, and instead, to put the money that would have been spent on certification towards more sustainability features. It is estimated that Stanford would have spent $1.2 million in order to obtain LEED certification of all the new buildings within the last three years. Rather than paying consultants, contractors, and USGBC fees, Stanford used that funding to incorporate sustainability features such as heat recovery HVAC systems, PV installations, rainwater storage systems, enhanced building controls, ad water cooled (instead of air cooled) chillers into its building portfolio. These significant features within Stanford's high-performance buildings add value without formal certification, which merely increases the cost of the overall project. By taking potential certification fees and putting them back into its projects, Stanford can leverage its resources to achieve a real and quantitative impact instead of a plaque and accolade.