When it comes to sustainability, C.D. Smith walks the talk. Its headquarters in Fond du Lac is Gold LEED certified and includes sustainable features including solar panels that provide energy to the entire business.
Holly Brenner, senior vice president of strategic development and marketing with C.D. Smith, talked with Insight about the growing demand for buildings with sustainable features and why it’s worth it to pay more now to reap savings later on.
What drives businesses to include sustainable features in their projects?
I think there are several things going on. The first is a real concern about climate change and what businesses can do to reduce their carbon footprint. The Biden administration has focused more on climate change with policy changes.
It’s also more popular with millennials and younger workers. It’s something they care about.
The second is that cool factor as marketing and pop culture are kind of influencing toward more sustainable practices. But I think customers are thinking more about sustainability and their corporate and personal impact on climate change in the environment than they have before, which drives some of that decision-making.
Companies want the latest and greatest technologies in their buildings and some of that is driven by sustainability, such as LED lighting or automatic shades that go up and down depending on the sunlight streaming in. Sustainability really has transitioned from a novel trend to a must-have.
Is cost a barrier?
It is more costly to build a sustainable building. But like I said, I think policy change will drive relief aid and drive more demand for businesses to incorporate sustainable features. We are definitely seeing more being included, especially when I think about corporate office spaces. We’re seeing a greater focus on wellness and quality of employee spaces and amenities and things like that than ever before. Sustainable amenities may start off costing more, but long term, they pay for themselves. LED lighting is a perfect example. You pay more at the start for LEDs, but they cost less long term to use them.
Our building is very sustainable. It’s a beautiful structure, but it’s full of sustainable features. We wanted to create this building to show people we’re serious about sustainability and the work we do. We can also show people how the different features work or how we use the solar panels on our building to power it and how if we have too much energy, we can sell it back to the grid. We also practice daylight harvesting with floor-to-ceiling energy-efficient windows to optimize daylight, so we need to use less electricity to light our spaces. We also promote recycling and waste reduction through such things as using reusable cups in the cafeterias.
While we’re out in the field, sustainability is also on our minds. We recycle materials out in the field. For example, we may take any concrete that we’ve pulverized and look to use it in the base of the parking lot. Or we may take bricks from a building being torn down and use them in the replacement building or a building expansion. We try to send as little as possible to the landfill.
What are some of the latest trends you’re seeing in sustainability?
We’re involved in two projects that both include the latest sustainable technologies. We’re building Ascent in Milwaukee, which will be 25 stories high and have 259 apartment units. A cool thing about that project is our use of mass timber. Mass timber is a category of framing styles characterized by using large solid-wood panels for wall, floor and roof construction. It’s very innovative, looks nice and has a smaller carbon footprint than a typical building. It also meets fire safety requirements.
Right now, we’re also working on a CornBoard plant in Iowa. After corn is harvested, there’s a lot left in the field — stalks, leaves and cobs — and the idea is to take all of that material and use it to make pallets. It’s a renewable forest that returns annually since every year we plant corn, and at harvest, this material is available once again. Being part of this goes back to our values of sustainability and being part of innovative projects.
Technology also plays a role in C.D. Smith’s sustainable efficiencies.
Technology plays a role in everything we do from the way we communicate in the office to work being done in the field. We have a lot of estimating tools and software that we use to make sure that if a customer says, oh, we want to go from this to this, we’re able to with a click of a button and actually show them what that looks like. Along with that, if there is an adjustment in the price of gasoline or (another material), (we can) show that very quickly, very efficiently. Our employees also try to print documents only when necessary to cut down on paper usage.
Unlike some construction companies, you employ your own tradesmen. Does that bring efficiencies to projects?
The principles the company was built on — integrity, hustle and quality — drive what we do. We try to attract individuals that embody those things. We do our own masonry and employ a lot of tradesmen. We have about 600 employees. Having workers on staff who may be able to go to a different site to help out if we’re making a push on a project is a differentiator. We don’t need an intermediary. We just send our own people over. We have a lot of employees who have been with us for a long time.
