John Fulmer

East Mill Street Studio

313 Hardwick Place
Joppa, Md. 21085
410.510.7513
814.512.1482 cell
814.975.1144 fax

Greenbuild 2007

If the throng of people who assembled at Greenbuild 2007 is any indication, sustainable

building is no longer a niche market or practice.

Attendees were met with a long, disorganized registration process, but the overflow crowd for

the convention, sponsored by the U.S Green Building Council (USGBC) and held in Chicago’s

McCormick Place from Nov. 7-9, only helped solidify the notion that the green movement is now

mainstream. Organizers expected 20,000 and seemed totally unprepared for the 22,835 who

showed up.

Initiated in 2002, in Austin, Texas with a crowd of just 4,000, Greenbuild once largely

showcased regional vendors and contractors, but the 2007 convention featured heavy-hitting

multinationals such as Dow, DuPont and Siemens and huge contractors such as Skanska and

Whiting-Turner. The trade-show floor offered 850 booths with exhibits as diverse as soy-based

adhesives, airplane-tire based rubber floor coverings, composting toilets, energy-efficient lighting

and building controls, roof gardens, and an entire area devoted to Forest Stewardship Council

(FSC) wood products.

An eclectic mix of conventioneers, somewhat unusual for a trade show, was on hand.

Students and scruffy-looking 20-somethings, no doubt drawn to the convention by the siren of

idealism, rubbed shoulders with well-dressed, high-profile architects and their geekier

counterparts in facility management, building commissioning, contracting and engineering. Bill

Clinton, jokingly referred to “as Al Gore’s president,” handled the keynote address, giving the

convention an extra-high-profile sheen.

 “All new construction—all of it—should be green,” said Clinton, adding that a green

economy is “the biggest opportunity to create broad-based prosperity since World War II. In 18

months we’ll be racing to see who can make the most energy positive buildings.”

Just about every veteran trade show attendee spoke about the unusual energy and enthusiasm

at Greenbuild and the heavy traffic at the booths. Even the inconvenience at registration was

offset by the schmoozing while waiting in line, said Amy Cornelius, a project manager with Hugh

Lofting Timber Framing, a Kennett Square, Pa. specialty contractor. Cornelius, like many at

Greenbuild, is an Accredited Professional in USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental

Design program or, in shorthand, a LEED AP.

“I have a friend who came and he’s starting a green hedge fund so he was there looking for

companies to invest in,” Cornelius said. “He met so many people that he forgot that he had been

in line all of that time. So he and I both said the same thing, which was interesting. It wasn’t that

it was so interesting to see what somebody is doing today, it was interesting to talk to them about

what they are going to do in four years.”

Cornelius, a Greenbuild first-timer, was dismayed by the lack of representation by solar and

wind power companies, but was impressed overall by the variety of exhibitors, seminars and

programs. She called green building a “web” whose many strands can be scary for someone

putting together a sustainable-building project.

“I actually put my name in to be on the (USGBC) board this year because I wanted to be able

to get to the little general contractors that are actually building all of the buildings, who are afraid

of the green stuff,” she said. “And I think that the Green Building Council recognizes that there’s

a problem there. But they don’t know how to deal with it either. They said, ‘Go run some other

nonprofit then come back to us and we’ll be able to put you on the board.’

“But I thought it was a terrific show,” she said. “It was a bunch of really smart people who

were very interested in learning as much as they could. Not because they had a specific project—
they might have one in the future—but they had a specific interest in learning a lot and that was

refreshing. It made you really energized to go and learn more yourself and apply these things

yourself. You know, I think I wrote twelve business plans while I was there.”

Chris Bailey, particleboard sales manager with The Collins Co., a Portland, Ore., wood

products manufacturer, dealt with a steady stream of architects, engineers and other specifiers.

Collins also won a Top Ten product award at Greenbuild for its FreeForm particleboard,

advertised as the “only FSC-certified particleboard in North America.” The FreeForm spec sheet

lists its potential for LEED credits, such as “recycled content” and “regional materials.” For the

uninitiated, LEED rates sustainable-construction practices through a point system. It’s a

comprehensive rating, and some means of gathering points, such as installing energy-efficient

lighting, seem logical. Others, such as awarding points for “regional materials” are more oblique

and arcane. But since FreeForm comes from sources close to the manufacturing facility, in this

case, within 500 miles, it means less fuel is required for its transport.

Bailey, who has missed just one Greenbuild, described the booth traffic as a group of

knowledgeable folks who wanted to know more than whether products were FSC certified, they

wanted how they were certified.

“They wanted to know, ‘Where is your wood source?’ In our case, it is all our own land, but

then they wanted to know about the company,” he said. “They want to know where you’re

sourcing it. Were there other things your company was doing on the environmental front? It was

definitely more of a holistic kind of questioning than just product-specific questioning.

“And I heard some people comment that they didn’t want to buy products from a company

that made one item in a sustainable fashion just to meet the niche and everything else is made

with a business-as-usual, production-type approach,” Bailey said. “Definitely a deeper

questioning than you would normally get from a traditional crowd.”

Jim Melillo, an account executive with Siemens Building Technologies, said his company,

which provides products for integrated building systems, among many other things, has had a
booth at Greenbuild for two years. He met with engineers and some developers who were looking

to incorporate green building technologies into the existing buildings or finding out how to attain

LEED accreditations in new construction.

“The people that were coming up to us were asking us what did we offer because they didn’t

really understand how our energy conservation or our energy methods or design-build methods

would help their particular facility,” said Melillo. Siemens, he added, also designs systems, which

was of particular interest to developers “So what they wanted to know from us is how we can be

involved early from a design-build perspective where, if they brought us in early, helping design,

there is certain building-automation equipment to give them the energy needs that they need now

rather down the road after the building has been built.”

Angela Schumacher, a performance assurance specialist with Siemens Energy Services

Group, dealt more with facility managers

“Primarily, our focus was controls and building optimization,” she said. “A lot of the

feedback or a lot of the people who were at the conference were focusing on solar. That was one

of the biggest things that a lot of people talked about or were concerned about or interested in.

And building automation controls, obviously.”

Her group biggest focus, she said is trying to implement the LEED certification into what we

do. She works on performance contracting (PC), a construction method that includes energy-

saving improvements within an existing budget by financing them with money saved through

future reduced utility costs.

“Truly understanding the overlap of what we do in PC to identify what would change in the

scope of work to, not only save them energy at a PC format, but to also make them eligible to

receive LEED certification,” she said. “If not right now, at least get them on the path to do that.

Identifying kind of where we fit in, implementing that into our PCs and our audits that we do

now, and kind of moving toward that.

She agreed Greenbuild was different type of show.

 “Primarily just the energy,” she said. “I mean, no pun intended, but the energy of the people

there. There was a lot more excitement; people were a little bit more interested, not just by the

technology, but beyond that how it affected the environment.

“And so being able to overlap things that would save them money in addition to those that are

more environmentally friendly,” she said. “There was a big cross between people were ‘greenies’

or environmentally aware to people who were, like Jim was saying, architects and engineers

looking for technology.”

Rich Bienvenu, also a LEED-AP, works as a landscape architect for LPA Inc. in Irvine, Calif.

This was his first Greenbuild and the first time his firm had been represented at the convention.

Bienvenu said traffic was excellent. With two people in the booth there wasn’t a time when

someone was idle. Bienvenu caught Clinton’s keynote speech, which he called realistic” and also

one by environmental guru Thom Mayne, the 2005 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate, that

“was very idealistic.”

“When you think about Clinton and Thom,” Bienvenu said, “and then you begin to see that

it’s not only an issue of conservation—and, of course commerce has to be a big part of it—but it’s

really a moral issue. What kind of world are we going to leave for future generations?”