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by Bob Graves

Green Technology, in collaboration with VCA Green, a green code consulting, training and commissioning company, has been conducting “Understanding CALGreen” seminars and training across the state of California over the past year.

VCA Vice President Charles "Russ" Russell, C.B.O. is a former building official with over 30 years of construction experience and serves as principal instructor for these classes. He has a deep understanding of the impact of the new California Green Building Standards Code (CALGreen) on the building industry throughout the state. Russ recently met with Green Technology’s editor at large, Bob Graves, to share his perspectives.

You’ve been working with building codes for more than three decades as a contractor, building official and now an executive of a code consultant croup. How will CALGreen affect buildings in California?

CALGreen has a number of different purposes. Among them are conserving energy, conserving water and diverting as much from landfills as possible. Years ago we were never really that concerned about these things. Take trash, for example. When I was a superintendent in construction you’d throw everything into a roll-off bin and it all went to the dump. You never thought about waste diversion. But we’re running out of landfills. Those who don’t believe we are running out of landfills, out of energy, out of water I think are in for a rude awakening, because some place down the road, in the very near future, this is going to hit.

I see buildings becoming more efficient. It’s a good thing because, as I show during my presentations, 75 percent of all structures in the US will either be remodeled or brand new by 2035. That’s an amazing fact. You look across this country and that’s a huge number. It’s California with CALGreen now. Maybe next year it’ll be another two states picking up green building codes, perhaps New York, or Florida, Indiana, or Illinois. I think eventually it’ll go across the country.

CALGreen provides options for local jurisdictions to go beyond the mandatory minimum requirements in the code. How are different jurisdictions approaching these green building options?

This question has a wide array of answers. What we’re seeing is most smaller jurisdictions are going with the mandatory minimum measures. That’s a good starting point and has a lot of merit. Then there are jurisdictions like the County of Sonoma and its nine cities. They have all agreed to take the same format, which is the mandatory measures plus Tier One. [Ed: “Tier One” and “Tier Two” are voluntary measures outlined in the code.] So, no matter where you work, either in the county itself or in those nine cities, you’ll all be working under the same code. I think that’s a wise choice.

Every jurisdiction is making its own decision based upon their community, and it appears that the larger jurisdictions are being just a little more aggressive than the smaller jurisdictions towards higher green building requirements.

You mentioned regional efforts in Sonoma County. Your offices are in Orange County and you have a number of client cities in this region. Are you taking part in regional efforts to coordinate or share information about implementing CALGreen?

Yes. In the course of delivering seminars on CALGreen I share information gathered in interactions with building officials from across the state. I’ve done presentations to many building officials, including to members of the County Building Officials Association in Monterey at their annual meeting. I also did a presentation a few weeks ago at the California Building Officials (CALBO). CALBO has its own green committee, as does the Los Angeles chapter of the International Code Council (ICC) and so on.

There’s a lot of information out there and I do try to share it. For example, the City of Long Beach is taking the mandatory measures plus picking up a couple of items out of the tiers and making them mandatory. A number of jurisdictions are doing that - taking mandatory measures and one or two items, sort of a cafeteria style, and inserting them into the mandatory measures to be applied to their jurisdictions. There will be all kinds of flavors of CALGreen throughout the state.

I hope that developers will contact their local building departments and find out what’s been adopted. Also of note, we’ve recently learned that the California Building Standards Commission is creating a database of the different CALGreen local amendments in the state. I think this is a great thing.

As the principle instructor for Green Technology’s “Understanding CALGreen” seminars, you’ve delivered to over 3,000 people around the state. What have you learned from that experience?

I’d been mostly working with building codes in Southern California. Going up and down the state has opened my eyes to other communities and other needs. North of San Francisco communities on well water look at things differently than clients I have out in the desert. Each community is unique in its requirements for construction.

The building official needs to look at the codes, his community and his environment and make sure that he uses the intent of the code to meet the unique needs of his community. I was in Arcata, a community with lots of water. They’re on wells and they don’t see the reason for a 20 percent reduction in water use.

You need to educate the community. In California there’s only so much water, period! It’s like a big bowl. Everybody puts in their straw and starts sucking the water out of it. Eventually you will find that the resource is not balanced against the demands. Most people, when you start talking about these things like this, say “all right I guess I can understand that - there’s only so much water.”

In your interactions across the state, do you see these local modifications of CALGreen as one-time decisions or do you see this as a continuing, evolving process?

I think the smaller jurisdictions will probably not revisit it for three years until the next code cycle. Other jurisdictions are talking about adopting mandatory measures for now and letting their communities adjust to these new items. Then, after a time, adding in one or two more items.

The biggest factor right now is familiarity with CALGreen, and that’s the reason we’ve been doing seminars up and down the state. As you mentioned, I’ve spoken to over 3,000 people, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the number of construction professionals, design professionals, engineers, building inspectors, building officials that are in the state.

There must be a couple of hundred thousand that people will make use of these codes. These professionals need to know more about CALGreen - it makes it so much easier on everybody in the long run. We’re continuing with our seminars well into the year.

You’ve touched on this, but what are the major challenges facing building departments with CALGreen?

In addition to CALGreen, the state has provided two implementation guidelines that give us the intent of the code and what the state is looking for in its use. It’s up to individual building officials to weigh all this information, look at their communities and then try to develop an enforcement strategy for their jurisdictions.

I heard the phrase, “enforcement strategy,” recently and I think it’s a good choice – here’s why. If a building department is just a little one-man shop, enforcement becomes a big task, because CALGreen is relatively new, with new kinds of requirements and documentation. For small jurisdictions with fewer resources it’s going to be a bigger challenge, and they’ll probably keep it as simple as possible until they become more familiar with it. Their enforcement strategy may change as they become a more aware of how the code works and how the community reacts to it.

Larger jurisdictions, like the City of Los Angeles, with greater building department resources are going to be more comprehensive on their enforcement strategy. Then there are jurisdictions like the County of Los Angeles with a number of contract cities that they service. They have to develop an enforcement strategy that fits each one of these smaller jurisdictions in the county.

It’s similar for every other building official. He needs to come up with a way of going through this whole process, implementing it, complying with the intent of the code, yet meeting the demands of this community. So it’s a challenge, it really is. Strategy by definition includes the concept of adjustment. You set a plan and then through a process you come back and revisit your plan. It’s a work in progress all the time.

Would you say that CALGreen is a significant change or more of an evolutionary step?

Many of practices found in CALGreen are being done already by one or more jurisdictions within the state. Placing them all together in a statewide code, well that was unique.

CALGreen was developed by the state rather than through the usual national model code adoption process. There was no green model code available to be adopted. They reached out to the stakeholders and took input from the public and private sectors and developed CALGreen. The new requirements are simply good building practices.

There are requirements in CALGreen for verification of products used in buildings such as VOC [volatile organic chemicals] content of sealants, adhesives, paints, that type of thing. What are the various options available to ensure compliance and verification?

The state cannot issue a mark or a stamp on a product saying it’s CALGreen compliant, because the state is not in the business of product endorsement. If a building inspector saw a “CALGreen” stamp on a paint can he’d know it was good but that’s not going to happen. There are third-party evaluation services that are looking at this issue. I know Underwriters Lab [UL] is coming up with a series of ten different types of evaluation processes for green products. I know ICC, the International Code Council, has green product verification services and, I believe, IAPMO [International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials] is looking into this area as well.

With products that go through one of these third party evaluations and get certified to comply with CALGreen, building inspectors can look at a list and say yes this paint complies, this caulk complies, this sealant complies, whatever the product is. Otherwise it’s going to be up to the building official to make the determination if a product does or does not comply with CALGreen requirements.

CALGreen calls for commissioning of commercial buildings over 10,000 square feet. This is new territory for building departments. How do you think they’ll approach this?

This is the question that I ask a lot of my building official colleagues up and down the state. Commissioning is a process to verify that the building meets the owner’s specifications. I understand the City of Los Angeles is going to try to do elements of commissioning with their own staff. I applaud them. I think it’s a good idea. There are some big hurdles to overcome, including staffing and education, but Los Angeles has taken on tougher challenges than this and has always come out a winner.

Other jurisdictions I’ve spoken with, due to staff reductions, downsizing of their city budgets and saving money, are pointing people more towards the third-party verification process. The applicant will obtain his permits from the city or county and then will need to retain the services of a commissioning coordinator to do the field verification of all the requirements of CALGreen. At the time of final inspection a document will be presented showing compliance with CALGreen commissioning requirements and a Certificate of Occupancy can be issued.

The code does allow the building official to issue a temporary certificate of occupancy. Let’s say that for some reason the commissioning process is a little behind schedule, two or three days or a week, because of contractors or equipment, and the owner wants to have a grand opening date. He wants to publicize the opening, it’s been scheduled weeks or months in advance, and he needs that temporary Certificate of Occupancy. That’s why this particular element is in the code allowing the building official that little latitude he needs to accommodate business people in his community.

Building officials are used to this type of process because again he’s trying to take care of his community and businesses. There are tools within the code that allow this additional latitude and I’m sure every building official’s going to use them.

How has the work you’ve been doing with CALGreen influenced VCA code group?

On our staff we currently have two LEED and two Build It Green professionals who work for our own clients. Now that CALGreen has come along we will provide additional support to the jurisdictions that we provide services to as well as private sector companies. VCA is in a unique position. We’re used to working with both building departments and architects, so we can act as a liaison to ensure CALGreen compliance. This includes completing commissioning requirements as smoothly and as sensibly as possible.

When it comes down to that last day when you’re going for a Certificate of Occupancy, and the owner of the building wants to get inside, we want everything to pass inspection. We want that commission report to be right there on the table and with all the t’s crossed and the i’s dotted, so that the owner can occupy his building. We see that we are in a position to help people. We want to help the architects and the building departments get through this in a seamless effort. This is a brand new code and we know what is needed. We’re passing that information down to our building clients.

Is CALGreen flexible enough to meet the diverse needs of building departments throughout the state?

Actually, it is amazing how flexible this code is. We go back to the old idea that people don’t like change. Here comes a brand new code and people feel “why do we need this?” But if you go down inside the code itself and look at its different requirements, we’re already doing much of it and it is very flexible. For example, in the past if the building official wanted to amend the code, there were only three categories he could use: geographical, topographical or climactic. But under CALGreen we have a new category “environmental.” A jurisdiction can amend the code with additional measures that fit their local environment.

This allows building officials to work with their city councils and to explore these different items, reach out to the community and find out what’s special. One thing about the code is you can never reduce the minimum requirement. You can always go above it, but you can’t go below it. So your community can raise energy efficiency by 10 percent, reduce water use by 25 percent (as opposed to twenty percent) or divert 65 percent of waste instead of 50 percent. There’s a lot of flexibility in it.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten wiser. I see this as a necessity. Eventually it’s going to be a great necessity, because there’s only so much of everything on the Earth. I think it’s better to slow down wasteful consumption right now.

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