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2019 Progress Report: Our Good Work
Each year, we report on several indicators that show progress toward achieving our goals for socially responsible and sustainable projects. The trends this reveals can indicate where we need to stay the course and where we need to make changes.
The “Top 100 Green Building Design Firms” ranking is determined each year by Engineering News-Record based on each year’s revenue from design or construction services for projects that have been registered or certified by a third-party organization that sets standards for measuring the environmental impact of buildings.
Average embodied carbon per square foot represents the global warming potential of the structural materials used in our major projects. This year, project managers used our new Beacon tool to quantify the CO2e emissions from structural elements and quantities used in their Revit models.
The CO2 reduction metric tracks the impact of sustainability improvements – like energy-efficiency measures and other strategies for reducing operating energy – that result from our sustainability consulting work. This total savings is the sum of individual project savings derived from energy modeling.
Cost savings from our sustainability consulting services are calculated using energy savings (above) and an average fuel-unit price for all projects.
Sustainability consulting projects includes all sustainability projects that are registered or certified by a green building program, such as LEED or Living Building Challenge. Each cumulative total includes all projects from previous years. These numbers do not include projects for which we didn’t provide sustainability consulting services.
R&D support includes the annual budget for CORE, our virtual incubator of ideas. This budget funds staffing and other support for CORE, as well as our semiannual innovation tournaments, which identify promising staff-generated ideas from across our diverse practices and departments for R&D funding and support.