The Obama administration gathered construction
industry and federal agency managers at a four hour closed door White House
meeting March 9, 2012, to hash over ways to push some uniform sustainibility
measurement standards into federal infrastructure procurement in the
transportation, housing, federal office building, defense and urban development
sectors. Jointly sponsored by the White House Council on Environmental Quality
and the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure, the private session was
attended by federal bureaucrats from HUD, DOT, DOD, GSA, and OMB. DHS was not
represented at the meeting.
Urging development of a uniform infrastructure
sustainability standard siimilar to LEED for buildings, the Obama
administration is pushing the Zofnass Program, and the Institute for Sustainable
Infrastructure, together with industry groups including the American Society of
Civil Engineers, the American Public Works Association and the American Council
of Engineering Companies to come up with standardized criteria the federal
government could incorporate into infrastructure bid documents and requests for
proposals on infrastructure projects.
According to Paul J. Zofnass, president of New York City based
environmental consutaing firm EFCG, Inc., “We either learn to make
infrastructure sustainable, or we’re toast.”
Some industry attendees at the meeting complained that
federal agencies resist sustainability in procurement bidding because
considering it is too difficult within the confines of a “lowest responsible
bidder” statutory procurement framework.
Michael W. Creed, CEO of North Carolina
based engineering firm McKim & Creed, remarked, “Should we add ‘depletion’
costs for non-renewable resources consumed during construction projects and use
that as part of a sustainability scorecard?” Currently there are at least two competing sustainability
rating systems: “Envision,” developed through the Zofnass Program and Harvard
University, and the ISI’s system, developed with input from various engineering
professiona societies. Leaders of development of the “Envision” system expect
to publicly release a pre-planning sustainability checklist and a project
sustainability economic assessment tool later this year.
While the White House effort is a laudable one, it
stands little chance of adoption any time soon. In the current Congressional
enviornment of cost cutting and tax reform, anything involving evaulation of
sustainability soft costs in the procurement process is likely to meet
political put downs as “funny math” or “another bridge to nowhere.”
