11 jun 2014 | Corporate Sustainability Report 2013
A letter from the partners
Welcome to our 2013 Corporate Sustainability Report (CSR). This is our third annual report and it demonstrates our continuous improvement with regards to sustainability in our operations and design activities. We are pleased with our 2013 results and we have met most of our goals. I want to congratulate our entire team for their dedicated and focused effort and commitment to achieving these goals.
That being said, we still believe that we need to push the boundaries in all of our activities. We need to reach for greater efficiency and set the standards as thought leaders. We need to do this EVERY DAY. For example, as energy efficiency becomes a main-stream focus we need to expand further into water efficiency and controlling waste in all of our activities.
The 2013 CSR also shows our commitment to the ‘AIA 2030 Challenge’ which pushes us to achieve the ‘2030 Commitment’ sustainable goals. The AIA 2030 Challenge mandates that we track how our project design efforts compare to the architectural industry as a whole. We still have a significant effort to go to meet the 2030 Commitment, as does the entire architectural industry. We need to create designs to influence and to LEAD our profession. We need to effect change.
We also need to make a concerted effort to educate our clients and to have them agree to share building data with us through the life of the building. From these results we can expand our database to allow us to compare performance and hopefully predict results with even greater accuracy. This will improve the efficiency of our design process.
We are committed to performative design as a firm-wide philosophy and we are adhering to this philosophy and even expanding the meaning of performative design. Our goal is that each and every person who works either for us, or with us as consultants or as our clients, is committed to these ideals.
We welcome any thoughts or comments that readers may have.
Robert Forest
FAIA, OAA, RIBA, LEED AP
Partner