What’s more important: an energy-efficient building or one that has back-up generators? Is access to green space more critical than emergency evacuation routes?
When designing a new facility—especially essential transit agency buildings—does sustainability or resiliency hold the trump card? Can the answer be neither? Or both?
If a transit agency has built or planned a new operations facility within the last five years, it’s fair to assume that addressing resiliency and sustainability played a prominent role in the project’s design. Determining which goals take precedence and where, however, is not black and white—especially given the critical functions transit operations facilities provide in the community.
Goal: Designing for resiliency: It requires embracing our collective capacity to anticipate, plan, and adapt for the future. In the context of transit, resilient facilities are those that bounce back, withstanding shocks where possible, and rebuilding or recovering when necessary. Designed correctly, they are regenerative environments. Building resilient facilities is more important than ever, as agencies prepare for everything from worsening natural disasters to concerns over terrorism.
Goal: Designing for sustainability: At the same time, there’s a growing focus across both the public and private sector on creating healthier, more sustainable work environments. There’s a growing body of information on how the built environment impacts our planet and the health and wellbeing of people. There are measurable ways agencies can improve those through the design of a facility.
While there is some important overlap in the goals of each, the task of creating the most resilient facility possible, with durable materials on a defendable site, can sometimes conflict with sustainability practices, particularly in four primary areas— site selection, building layout, energy efficiency, and materials.
In Stantec’s work with transit agencies spanning a wide range of sizes and geographies, we’ve found that the best results come not from choosing one over the other, but rather by striking the right balance between the two with a mix of strategies based on an individual agency’s goals and circumstances. The best solutions reflect a ‘both-and’ approach.
Sustainability vs. resiliency in facility planning and design
Before examining how specific agencies created that balance, it’s helpful to look at some of the general considerations when planning for sustainability vs. resiliency in a transit operations facility.
When it comes to selecting a site, a sustainable plan might consider the impact of the facility on the site and vice versa. A resilient design would also consider factors such as the site’s position relative to the floodplain, employee accessibility to and from the site in the event of a disaster, route adjacency, and operational efficiency.
Where a sustainability-driven site plan would consider factors such as the open space ratio, accessibility to green space, operational efficiency, vehicle circulation, and light pollution, a resilient site plan would also include planning for temporary relocation points, emergency evacuation, lock-down, or active-shooter situations.
From an energy perspective, a sustainable building energy system would focus on energy efficiency, minimizing carbon footprint and location impact. A resiliency-driven plan would prioritize systems reliability and redundancy, possibly including micro-grids, on-site battery storage, protected generators and back-up systems—all of which can contribute to additional energy consumption and work counter to an agency’s sustainability goals.
Looking at the building’s layout with sustainability in mind, the goal would be to take advantage of adjacencies, creating shared spaces and efficiencies in the layout as well as providing employees with access to the natural environment. A resilient layout would consider emergency preparedness (Where is the cot storage? Where would people shelter overnight? How and where would food be prepared, etc.?), necessitating extreme flexibility in the spaces.
When it comes to materials, sustainable design naturally focuses on recycled content, local and regional sourcing of materials, and material health/ingredient transparency. For resilient materials selection, the priority would be durability and maintenance-free materials that often have lower local availability for replacement.
Achieving the right balance
The above examples are just a sampling of the potential conflicts when planning for both resiliency and sustainability in an operations facility. Finding the right balance, comes down to prioritizing an agency’s specific goals.
While every design team approaches this differently, Stantec has developed a process whereby clients rank of a set of key values—what we call our Design 2 Thrive Principles —based on their needs, wants, and budget. From that ranking, we’re able to develop a plan and/or design that addresses resiliency and sustainability in a way that is most effective for them.
Following are two examples:
Heywood II – Net-Zero Energy, Occupant Wellbeing and Operational Continuity
For Heywood II in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the design team worked with the agency to identify three key areas of focus for their new bus operations and maintenance facility, which will serve approximately 220 buses. The Metro Transit division of the Metropolitan Council identified resilience (ensuring operational continuity), prosperity, and health as their key priorities.
Energy efficiency (even discussions around the viability of net-zero energy solutions) and the long-term cost savings has been an important goal of this project, which will comply with the state of Minnesota Sustainable Building Guidelines (B3 Guidelines)—a sustainability tool that the state has adopted in place of LEED. The challenge was to combine a highly functional facility design that gives assurance of operational continuity, along with features that support their desire for wellness within the administrative spaces, necessitating an innovative arrangement of spaces and selection of materials.
A tight, urban site with elevation changes drove a unique solution that placed the full operations and maintenance functions on the upper level, with parking, tank farms, and employee amenities below. Metro’s decision to think out-of-the-box allowed the design team to also maximize light, views, and flow within the admin and operations wing.
Nakoosa Trail Fleet/Fire/Radio – Energy Efficiency, Employee Health & Flood Plain Resilience
For our Nakoosa Trail Fleet/Fire/Radio facility in Madison, Wisconsin, the identified values were energy, resilience (particularly given the original site’s position in the floodplain), and health. The Fleet/Fire/Radio Shop Facility will provide light, medium, and heavy vehicle service and repair spaces for the City of Madison’s fleet of public safety, police, emergency vehicles, public works vehicles and equipment, fire apparatus, and other service automobiles, trucks, and equipment.
Given the critical function of this facility during emergencies and storm events, as well as the consolidation of three separate facilities into one, ensuring the facility could withstand disaster – natural or manmade – was important. This site was well selected by the City and out of the 100-year floodplain map, so we focused on maintaining accessibility into, out of, and through the facility in the event of a disaster. Additionally, the project is targeting LEED Gold Certification, so factors like materials selection and employee health became key priorities.
The project employs not only photovoltaic panels on the roof, but solar hot water panels supporting radiant flooring throughout, and a number of unique energy reclaim or efficiency techniques, including a Transpired Solar Collection wall—or ‘solar wall’—which helps offset demand in the light-duty bays. The systems are designed so efficiently that the City received $200,000 from Wisconsin’s state-sponsored rebate program, the highest rebate allowed.
Sustainability and resiliency working hand-in-hand
While the reality is that that compromises between sustainability and resiliency will likely always be a factor in operations facility design, it’s also entirely possible for the two to work in tandem in a well-designed facility. The key is to find the right balance (and the right planning and design partner) for your agency.
Ken Anderson is Principal, Transit Sector Leader, Buildings for Stantec.
