Conservation

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Our Woodworking Barn Gives New Life to Trees Cut on Site

May 14, 2010 in Conservation, Construction Trends, Green Building | 4 comments

With the green movement in full swing, we’re seeing lots of great trends towards sustainability. One that’s caught my attention is “certified wood”, a term encouraging us to know the type of forestry or origins of the wood used in the products we select.

In our work, we have access to wood on commercial project lands and feel it’s an important green initiative to work with those trees respectfully. As a company, we like to think we’re actually creating sustainability by saving quality wood from the chipper whenever possible.

Our dream has been to collect quality wood from construction project sites and utilize it to create handcrafted furniture of sustainable, commemorative beauty. To make this a reality, we built a full service woodworking center in our barn specifically for this purpose.

We cut some Tulip Poplar on a job the other day. Since Tulip Poplar is a fine hardwood for woodworking, we sent it to be lumbered and kiln dried. Once dried, it will come here to our Stewart Perry campus where the woodworking shop is now in full force. We’re following a concept developed by Sir Gordon Russell in England after World War II, which fostered local artisans to design and create finely crafted furniture using a wide variety of local woods.

Since our campus nestles up to the scenic Cahaba River, we’re in the process of designing our “Cahaba” furniture line. The Tulip Poplar is destined to become some of our “Cahaba” tables. The tables will be a gift to the landowners where the wood was cut. We hope the result will be treasured tables from their treasured trees.

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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.

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Start Spreading the News: Even an Existing New York Building Can Go Green

April 7, 2010 in Conservation, Construction Trends, Green Building, Remodeling, Technology | No comments

I’m sure you’ve heard the industry’s excitement about LEED certified construction. Once considered more ideology than practicality, we’re realizing that green building can actually be more cost effective than traditional methods. The trend is catching on, and it’s not just private companies who’ve embraced sustainability. In 2006, government agencies began requiring all new buildings meet certain LEED certification thresholds. This translates to a huge emerging market for our industry.

But what about major cities, where construction is land-locked? Retrofitting and remodeling become essential since structures are already standing. The prime example? New York City.

The Hearst Tower, home to publishing company Hearst Corporation, shows the trend in action. Completed in 2006, it became the first occupied commercial building in NYC to achieve a LEED “Gold Rating.”

Norman Foster of Foster + Partners designed the Tower to be constructed over and around an existing 6-story building. The new entry plaza houses the entire shell of that base, which was erected in 1928. Truly a marriage of old and new, the Tower was constructed from recycled steel, and uses 26 percent less energy than conventional NYC buildings.

Sustainable features include:

  • Rainwater collection on the roof to replace water lost in air conditioning system and reduce sewer deposits
  • A 2-story “Icefall” in the atrium area uses chilled collected rainwater to cool the vast area in summer and humidify in winter
  • Coated glass to reduce solar radiation and cooling load
  • Sensor-controlled artificial light based on amount of natural light available
  • Walls coated with low vapor paints
  • Low toxicity furniture, furnishings and carpeting constructed from sustainable or recycled materials
  • Concrete surfaces treated with low toxicity sealants

I think the words of Old Blue Eyes sum it up perfectly: “I’ll make a brand new start of it, in old New York; If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” If Foster + Partners can make LEED Gold happen in midtown Manhattan, we can do it anywhere.

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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.

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Looking for an Easy Way to Invest in Green? Purchase Power Credits.

March 30, 2010 in Conservation, Green Building, LEED certified, Preservation, Technology | No comments

This April marks two years since we moved to our new corporate campus. The upcoming anniversary got me thinking back to 2005 when we first started the design of our building and grounds. Being a responsible member of our new community was of the utmost importance, so it made sense to build with minimal impact and sustainability top of mind. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards seemed like a great guide to follow.

As many of you know, LEED is the certification program developed by the USGBC (U.S. Green Building Council), which gives points in the following categories:

  • Sustainable sites
  • Water efficiency
  • Energy and atmosphere
  • Materials and resources
  • Indoor environmental quality

Depending on the points a site accrues, the USGB grants certification at these levels:

  • Silver
  • Gold
  • Certified
  • Platinum

LEED was brand new to me back in 2005. We worked hard to educate ourselves and attain a Silver certification.

As we were getting ready for our final submission to the USGBC, I tallied up points. I discovered then that we could buy green power credits for points toward the certification. This means we would pay a little extra to use “green power” to offset the electricity used during construction and subsequent operation of the building. What you buy is based the anticipated building usage, guaranteeing energy is added to the grid from renewable sources like solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and hydro.

This seemed like cheating after all the hard work we had put into building materials and systems. After investigating, I determined the opposite was true. We were creating awareness, helping support a fledgling component of our power grid and reducing carbon emissions. You can do the same.

The EPA has created the Green Power Partnership (GPP), which works with organizations to determine if green power purchase is right for them. During the past year, the top 20 participating retailers had a combined green power purchase of nearly 3.3 billion kilowatt hours annually. That’s enough electricity to power more than 300,000 American homes for a year.

Kohl’s, Whole Food Markets, Pepsi, Dell, Deutsche Bank, ING, Dannon, The Tower Companies, and North Face are using green power for 100% of their U.S. electricity use. We’re working hard to get there too.

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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.

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Even Small Steps Towards Green Can Increase Leasing and Improve Tenant Relations

March 18, 2010 in Conservation, Customer Relationships, Green Building | No comments

Why should you as a landlord get ahead of the curve and embrace the trend towards sustainability? Burst Media found nine out of ten consumers are putting some kind of green in their daily routine. This means a growing number of tenants are looking for easy green options. They want to be conscious citizens AND they want to save money. In this tough economy, any value add you present will give you edge. So why not start with a baby step? Light bulbs.

The diagnosis for the 130-year-old incandescent light bulb is definitely terminal. It’s evolved into a new creature—the digital LED bulb—and the Edison’s original technology is officially on its way to extinction.

Although it may take another ten years for the old light bulb to completely disappear from retail shelves, there’s no doubt that green education is making LEDs a more popular consumer choice. Here’s why:

  • LEDs are 10 times more energy efficient than traditional bulbs.
  • The best of the LED bulbs have a lifespan of 20 to 25 years if you burn them 3 hours a day.
  • Disposal is greener because, unlike previous generations of bulbs, LEDs don’t contain mercury.

As you can see, cost savings for America’s corporate users are dramatic, especially in industries like manufacturing where energy bills and maintenance are a major factor in operating costs. Estimated payback for making the switch is two to three years on the energy cost alone.

It may be a small step, but installing LED lighting will lead to big savings for your tenants, and for you. You’ll be making fewer replacement purchases and fewer installation rounds. In the end, everyone—even the planet—wins.

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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.

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Actions Speak Louder than Words: Corporate Philosophy Actualized

February 11, 2010 in Conservation, Green Building, Leadership, Management, Preservation, Team Building | No comments

Anyone can talk a big game. It seems that in the name of public relations, lots of business leaders are talking up green initiatives, corporate responsibility and the importance of a welcoming in-office environment. It all sounds good, but does it ever really play out in day-to-day operations?

I’ve always thought that corporate culture goes far beyond philosophy. It’s about application and tangible execution when possible. That was top of mind as we made plans for our new campus. We tried to make every detail speak to who we are as a company. The conference table, a focal point of our largest gathering place, was no exception.

Throughout my career, I’ve sat at many a conference table. It seems most are rectangular, a shape requiring someone to sit at the head, “in charge.” A round table would support a “team” atmosphere, but is inefficient for the number of chairs accommodated to its size. This led us to choose a square design—it’s efficient and puts us all on equal footing.

With that decided, I commissioned my friend Tom Church and his wife Susan to design and construct the piece. I requested our table be made from Red Bald Cypress we salvaged from swampland on a project in Florida. The Churches came from Tennessee to collect the wood.

Tom was kind enough to call a few weeks later to let me know he’d come up with a layout for us to discuss. Over the years, I have learned that one should never tell the artist how to paint the painting. I knew Tom had a unique eye for design, a gift of craftsmanship and patience of task. I gave him free reign on the finished product and signed off without seeing a single drawing.

The result was beyond my expectations. The real beauty of the table lies in the way it was put together. The Red Bald Cypress is exceptional, and the craftsmanship equally superb. It was obvious that Tom and Susan devoted a great deal of time to the detail of the design, from the seemingly flawless surface to the curvature of the edges to the solidity of the support. All is in arts and crafts style, hand-assembled with pegs.

While the table is attractive to the eye, the message lies in its components. I found huge significance in Tom’s decision to incorporate two cracked boards. Rather than discard the flawed wood, he reinforced it with burl walnut so that those two boards could be used in the table along with the others. Every time I see the table I am reminded that none of us is perfect and we require a little mending from time to time. With the support of others, we form a solid team.

What are you doing to bolster your team?  If you’re talking the talk, are you walking the walk? I encourage you to live your corporate philosophy. We continue to see the benefits. Mementos around the office—like our table—are reminders not only of who we are, but what we can be.

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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.

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Fire: Nature’s Preservation Tactic and Business’ Opportunity to Evolve

February 9, 2010 in Conservation, Preservation | No comments

Last week when I was at the University of the South, Sewanee, I traveled through the new Spencer Wing of Woods Laboratories on the campus. I found myself in the Forestry Department in front of a plaque that reads “Restoring Our Forest,” with the subtitle “Importance of fire in the forest communities.”

It goes on to explain the benefit of flames. When fire strikes a wooded area, the species living there adapt to survive, often using the disturbance to their advantage. If the flames are suppressed, it can actually hurt the adapted species. It’s an intriguing concept. The very thing that tears a forest down is essential to maintaining it.

I couldn’t help but think of the times we are in. The last couple of years have been difficult, challenging and devastating to some. It feels like the blaze is rising high around us, but I believe we will be just like the species of the forest community. We will survive, adapt and find a competitive advantage in our experiences. Until the fire is extinguished, I’ll be thinking about how it can help my team evolve.

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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.

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Water Preservation 101: Points on Collaboration and Education

February 5, 2010 in Conservation, Green Building, LEED certified, Preservation, Technology | No comments

Last week, I attended the Cahaba River Society’s (CRS) annual meeting. I’ve been a board member for about a year now. The Society protects our beautiful river and facilitates public conversations about environmental well-being.

While the CRS still focuses much of its energy on the River and its basin, it is also evolving into something much greater and more important from my perspective, and that is the business of “water education.” Without quality water, there’s not much life. The health and abundance of our water supply has immeasurable impact on our environment, both now and for future generations. It seems vital that we teach the public how to protect this resource.

Unfortunately, environmental campaigns are often politically charged and met with equal parts support, resistance and apathy. As the organization grows and matures, I’ve seen the CRS learn better ways of being collaborative in efforts to deal with those who might disagree. They are listening, being transparent and stating operations clearly. I have always found that if two sides are opposed, as long as there is a sliver of agreement, some kind of compromise can be reached. This has rung true for the CRS as they deal with local businesses and the public.

This meeting focused on educating about the environmental impact of storm water. Both as a conscious citizen and as a builder, I found these lessons valuable and thought I’d share takeaways here:

• How we build our communities and deal with storm water today will determine the kind of rivers we have forever.

• If proper designs are not put in place, the increased runoff from development will degrade water quality, increase flooding, collapse riverbanks, impoverish the river’s diverse life, and make our drinking water more expensive and scarce.

• A natural forest absorbs rain like a sponge, replenishing groundwater and keeping our rivers clean and flowing, even in droughts. Maybe we begin to think about fewer hard surfaces and single points of discharge.

• Designers might consider concepts of low impact development and green infrastructure – rain gardens, permeable paving, green roofs, cisterns – practices that use rain as a resource, infiltrating and reusing it.

• Low-impact development tries to keep as much water as possible on site so that it can be infiltrated to replenish groundwater or harvested and reused in a manner that reduces the use of treated municipal water.

• It’s important to get involved with municipalities and storm water partners to nurture a working relationship for a unified voice to the policy changes needed to protect us all. Would you consider using this knowledge to better the environment? More importantly, would you please share what you’ve learned with others? Simplistic as it may sound, together we can make a difference.

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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.

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How to Spend Wisely When Choosing an HVAC System

January 28, 2010 in Commodities Pricing, Conservation, Management, Projects, Remodeling | 2 comments

HVAC (Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning) systems have evolved and gotten better with technology.  Matching system requirements with the need and with quality will always trump the bells and whistles. Over the years I have worked with a number of HVAC subcontractors and a few thoughts come to mind that might be useful:

SYSTEM ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Depending on the application and occupancy, a higher SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Rating) for equipment is preferable most of the time. A higher the SEER means more expensive equipment, but the lower operating cost is a win for energy and your occupants.

SYSTEM MAINTENANCE
When selecting the right HVAC system, keep in mind the occupancy type vs. the long-term cost of maintenance. Chilled water/boiler systems will require preventive maintenance for a chiller, cooling tower, boiler, heat exchanger, etc to a greater extent than a DX (direct expansion) unitary system. A DX split or packaged system will be a handful of components that are readily available and replaced at a minimal cost.

INSTALLATION COST
Most of the HVAC system cost is in the equipment and control system. Both are important to system sustainability. Duct systems normally require little maintenance if quality materials, closure systems, sealants and higher “R” value insulation are used. Providing the correct type of air distribution is just as vital as selecting the equipment and will maximize coverage, eliminate the draft effect on occupants as well as air noise transmitted from the device due to a high velocity (fpm) of air.

BUILDING AUTOMATION
There’s a big debate over whether to use programmable thermostats or fully automated systems. Most projects perform well with proper zoning and programmable thermostats as opposed to extensive control systems that require increased up front cost and service for the life of the system.

Each control system has a place in the “right choice column.” A commercial building operating from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. will have different needs than an institutional building or medical facility. The challenge with a fully automated system is it’s almost always proprietary in nature and can only be serviced by the brand vender, leaving the building owner with no other option for value shopping. A stand-alone zoned system with programmable thermostats is fairly user-friendly and can be serviced by any commercial company. This dramatically reduces long-term replacement and/or maintenance cost for the end user.

To me, when it is all said and done, you need a cost-efficient system that will deliver the performance and can be maintained without having to go to the banker every time a failure happens.

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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.

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What You Can Learn From a Trailblazer’s Use of Social-Justice Architecture

November 23, 2009 in Conservation, Green Building, LEED certified, Preservation | No comments


We’ve all heard the saying, “everything old is new again.” At our place, we’ve challenged ourselves to find inventive ways to repurpose materials that might have otherwise left behind. As a result, our ceilings, parts of our deck and even our conference table are crafted from wood that would have otherwise been left at our Florida projects.

Never have I seen a truer personal example than in Sam Mockbee, a pioneer in pragmatic design whose biography I recently received. He made turning old things into something unique and usable his life’s passionate work.

Sam or “Sambo” as he was known to his friends, understood the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” concept long before it became a slogan for sustainability and doing things right. He created the Rural Studio Program at the Auburn University School of Architecture, where students repurpose ordinary and recycled materials into houses and useful buildings for the residents of Hale County, Alabama. His creations take care of basic needs and in the process provide rays of hope.

Sam would tell his students that the places they create have got to be warm, dry and noble. He spent the last 10 years of his life building those spaces for many and that legacy continues. Using salvaged materials like lumber, bricks, discarded tires and hay bales, the Rural Studio produces inexpensive structures in a style that Mockbee described as “contemporary modernism grounded in southern culture.” As noted in this Metropolitan Magazine article, the process gives students hands-on experience in designing and building something real, extending their education beyond paper architecture.

Our Stewart Perry headquarters have always reminded me of Sam Mockbee’s work and about half way through the building process I found out why. I learned that Tommy Goodman, who designed our place and is now a professor or architecture at Mississippi State University, was Sambo’s business partner. The influence of the Rural Studio is woven all through our campus. We removed coal tailings from the lake and used them to repave parking area for a neighborhood church. Our hardwood floors are refurbished from a tobacco plant in Virginia. I feel our folks are always thinking of ways they can lower our environmental impact.

Are there opportunities to do similar things around your office, home or construction site?

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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.

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The Easiest Donation You’ll Ever Make: A Simple Gift of Space Can Preserve Natural Treasures

November 6, 2009 in Conservation, Preservation, The Outdoors | No comments

Cahaba lilies-small-Hunter Nichols

“To whom much is given, much is expected.”

That adage has stayed with me for many years. Our company is fortunate to have a nice corporate campus, and I feel that in order to be a good steward of the land, I should invite others to enjoy our place. In the last few months, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Fresh Water Land Trust and the U.S. Green Building Council have met using our conference area.

Our conference room is surrounded by a porch that hangs out over a small lake. There’s an island in the middle of the water where a single willow tree sits—the same one you see illustrated on our homepage. In the surrounding woods, wildlife abounds. The setting is tranquil and invites open conversation. Last week Stewart Perry was privileged to host the Cahaba River Society, bringing supporters of the river together in dialogue with community and business leaders.

Over the years, we’ve been active with the CRS as a company. The picturesque river has been the beneficiary of their conservation efforts over the last several decades. It meanders through the region, providing a source of drinking water, recreational opportunities and even a distinct species of lily only found here. While we’ve always been interested in preserving the River, our first real advocacy in the Society came when we built a grocery store project literally on its banks. We took great precautions to leave our surroundings unaffected and have been passionate about keeping the river clean and natural ever since. Hosting a CRS event seemed like a logical extension of our commitment.

This particular fall evening was crisp by Alabama standards, with a backdrop of trees changing color around the lake, a campfire and glass garage doors open from the kitchen to the patio. While the setting was perfect for talk of preserving nature, the presentation by CRS’s Betsy Thagard made the event truly special. She talked about water conversation and explained why water quality is so important to our lives and to our community. Beyond environmental benefits, there are huge economic payoffs that come with being good stewards of resources.

The time together not only reinforced relationships with donors, but helped open doors for new benefactors. As relationships with development professionals were strengthened, they were encouraged to excel in efforts to protect our water systems for future generations. I’m proud that our campus could be a catalyst for environmental preservation.

Click for more information on the Cahaba River Society, or check out this article in the July issue of Smithsonian Magazine.

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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.

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