HDR wins awards for sustainability leadership, services

Omaha, Neb. — HDR’s corporate sustainability program and client services have been recognized with two awards from the Business Intelligence Group. The group’s annual Sustainability Awards program honors those who have made sustainability an integral part of their business practice. HDR won a Sustainability Leadership Award for its corporate Waste Prevention and Recycling Standard, and the HDR Health + Wellness Tool developed for healthcare clients was named one of two Sustainability Services of the Year.

HDR’s Waste Prevention and Recycling Standard was launched in October 2015. Rather than mandating a single solution to waste reduction efforts, it provides information, tools and resources on waste prevention, recycling, composting, sustainable purchasing and other sustainability measures each office can tailor to its specific needs. More than 110 offices completed the baseline survey and set waste reduction goals for 2016.

As one example, the headquarters campus took part in a pilot food waste and composting study, which resulted in an average of 375 pounds of compostable material being removed from campus each week. Since extending the composting program, the weekly average has increased to 450 pounds and the number of trash dumpsters needed onsite has been reduced by half.

The HDR Health + Wellness Tool is a dashboard tool providing hard metrics on wellness design that healthcare clients can use in the earliest stages of design. As the concept of sustainable building design evolves from conserving resources to promoting human health, this tool gives clients a way to measure wellness-design cost benefits. By doing so, it bridges the gap between wellness strategies and their effects on building systems and human health.

The dashboard tool analyzes the physical environment to determine the impact on an occupant’s stress, safety, effectiveness, quality of work and overall behavior. It uses a 3D model with operational simulations that are tied to peer-reviewed health and wellness research in numerous categories including light, connections to nature and comfort. It is currently being piloted on three design projects: an office building, inpatient healthcare facility and lab.