Responsibility: Heart and mind of McKinstry’s sustainability
August 2008
Long before "LEED" and "green" were haphazardly spoken buzzwords, before energy prices were rapidly rising, Seattle building contractor McKinstry was committed to efficient and long lasting products. In the last 50 years, McKinstry has grown out of its humble roots: from a plumber to a national leader in building services and Washington CEO Magazine’s "#1 Best Company To Work For." Throughout its lifetime, McKinstry Company has understood that designing, building, and maintaining a structure to perform efficiently for generations simply makes good business sense. "There is a company culture here that has been devoted to highly efficient and sustainable buildings since before words were around to describe it," says Ash Awad, McKinstry’s Vice President of Energy.
At the heart of McKinstry’s mission is a deeply ingrained sense of responsibility— "responsibility to design, build, and operate facility systems." Awad explains, "With any of our structures and systems we always guarantee performance. We quote a savings and guarantee a return on investment. If the building doesn’t live up to the guarantee, we will write the client a check." It is this sense of responsibility, to their clients and for their products, that sets McKinstry apart from the competition. McKinstry sees business opportunities in longlasting, "legacy" relationships, as opposed to more transaction-based operations, which often sacrifice quality for day-to-day profits.
Associated with the opportunities of this "out-of-the-box and highly unusual thinking for this industry," are higher risks, says Awad. "Our engineers are focused on total cost of ownership driven decisions that consider the longevity of the solutions we are recommending—we’re trying to outfit buildings with technologies that won’t be obsolete in five years. This deliberate thinking coupled with our willingness to take on the risk of performance allows us to be the early adopters of the next generation of ideas." McKinstry began retrofitting buildings for higher energy efficiency well over ten years ago, around the time that the company adopted the slogan, "For the Life of Your Building."
The clean and efficient technologies implemented into today’s buildings vary depending on the location of the structure. "Solar Photovoltaics make more sense where tax incentives are in effect. Biomass energy is not applicable in a downtown corridor, but works well in rural areas. Passive solar could be widely used in many buildings," says Awad. Many of McKinstry’s latest technology research and development efforts are geared toward how and where LED (lighting) technology will be beneficial, and the use of advance building remote monitoring systems that can reduce building energy. They are also looking at thermal storage systems, which store heat through electricity that is generated at night (when it is less costly) for use during the day. Awad does not gloss over the risks associated with some new technologies, however, stating, "new technology with no proven track record that is difficult to maintain can create significant inefficiencies, so we need to be careful."
Yet in this day and age of consuming the latest and greatest product or idea, McKinstry’s successes with efficiency are mostly a result of old-fashioned responsibility. Awad explains: "We want to be consistently wringing out and fine tuning buildings every couple of years. For instance, once a LEED certified building has been built, the job has really just begun.
Buildings can go from optimal to less than optimal efficiency in less than one year. Much of the time, our fine-tuning doesn’t require capital for new technologies; it’s a matter of labor."
This fining tuning effort is more efficient with McKinstry’s state-of-the-art Knowledge Response Center technology. This system makes a building’s efficiency readings available at a remote location, providing cues as to where the structure is performing less than optimally.
And beyond the "built" environment, McKinstry’s sustainability efforts include reducing vehicle miles traveled to cut both consumption and costs.
With the passing of Washington’s Green Jobs bill, and the market for energy services growing daily, Awad believes that good competition will be healthy. His fear, however, is that "fly-bynight" companies may move in as unqualified service providers. In his opinion, "as we formulate green jobs, we should be thinking about new efficiency standards—about the highest possible standards of how buildings and businesses perform, not just how they’re being built." Maintaining a product throughout its lifetime; raising the bar on efficiency standards; researching solutions before they are allowed to become the next problem: these are some of the values held by McKinstry Company. These values are critical to businesses and individuals alike in this generation, as we gain a clearer understanding of what we are—and aren’t—leaving for those to come.
