City of Seattle Capital Green

Master Planning

Training

The City of Seattle has been a leader in establishing ambitious municipal sustainability goals and policies. By 2008, the City department responsible for managing and maintaining more than 200 city buildings, ranging from fire stations to office buildings, needed a way to align sustainable initiatives across all their project types, measure their result, and report on their progress. They turned to ArchEcology to help them create a sustainable master plan tool.
Teamed with a PR firm, ArchEcology researched successful best management practices and green implementation programs, conducted interviews with City Directors, surveyed staff and collected data from previous City construction projects. We developed sustainable strategies and implementation tactics based on the research, green building program requirements, energy codes, and other industry standards and guided City staff in aligning these strategies with the overarching municipal goals.
Ultimately, ArchEcology delivered a customized database implementation tool using a simple Excel spreadsheet interface. Using this tool, project managers can effectively filter and customize sustainable strategies into a project specific checklist with feedback and reporting functions built in. The tool was dubbed CapitalGREEN and can be viewed under Resources or on the web at http://www.seattle.gov/environment/buildings-and-energy/city-facilities/capital-green-toolkit.
In 2011 with the writing of the City of Seattle’s new Sustainable Building Policy, the use of Capital GREEN extended to other departments. The City of Seattle requires its use on all City projects and tenant improvements under 5,000 SF. ArchEcology has already updated the Capital GREEN database once for changing standards, created a new user manual and training materials, and has delivered several hands on training sessions to City staff.
Owner: City of Seattle
Location: Seattle, WA
Certification: NA
Services: Sustainable Master Planning, Customized sustainable implementation software toolkit and training.