by Brianna Crandall — February 21, 2011—The Green Building Initiative, (GBI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the acceleration of sustainable building practices, was recently awarded a contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to provide online green building self-evaluations for 173 hospital facilities using the Green Globes Continual Improvement of Existing Buildings environmental rating and assessment tool.
Upon implementation, this project represents the first large-scale, nationwide deployment and application of online evaluation tools for comprehensive sustainability assessment within a major federal government agency. The CIEB tool is compatible with the Federal High Performance and Sustainable Building Guidance executive order dated 12/1/2008. As part of the contract, GBI will provide training for VA facilities management personnel who will be performing the Web-enabled assessments.
The Green Globes CIEB program helps establish performance baselines, best practices and certification for operations and maintenance of a building in the environmental assessment areas of energy, water, resource management and emissions and pollution. The fully interactive, Web-enabled tool also allows facility personnel to measure, document, and improve the sustainability of a building over time.
This recent award follows a 2009 pilot project by the VA in which 21 hospitals across the U.S. were assessed and certified using the Green Globes system. For more information about on the pilot project, access the case study: The Portland VA Achieves 3 Green Globes.
