Thornton Tomasetti helps historic San Francisco City Hall get LEED Platinum

San Francisco — Thornton Tomasetti announced that the century-old San Francisco City Hall, for which the firm provided sustainability consulting as part of a larger renovation, achieved LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance (EB:OM) Platinum certification. The 516,484-square-foot Beaux Arts building, with the fifth tallest dome in the world, is the oldest in the United States to achieve platinum, the U.S. Green Building Council’s highest rating.

Retained by kW Engineering, the commissioning agent, and EnerNOC, the project manager for the project, Thornton Tomasetti managed the LEED certification process, which included providing sustainability strategy recommendations to the design team, tracking compliance with LEED during the performance period, and reviewing and submitting documentation to the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI).

Thornton Tomasetti facilitated an in-depth analysis and field survey to identify low performing areas in order to greatly improve resource efficiency goals, such as those for water, energy and construction materials. The team implemented a retro-commissioning effort to reduce the building’s energy use and identified specific hurdles to pursuing LEED certification, such as identifying the need to separate building steam meters for district supplied steam.

Upon completion of the commissioning process Thornton Tomasetti worked with kW Engineering to determine which items with reasonable return on investment should be implemented.

Overall, energy efficiency improvements will reduce consumption by approximately 20 percent, helping to make City Hall one of the most energy efficient buildings in the country. The biggest changes were made to the HVAC systems, which alone will save 293,598 kWh of electricity per year. In order to improve and water efficiency, the restrooms were upgraded with low-flow and flush fixtures that will save 825,000 gallons of water per year.

The team, with the support of Transportation Management Association of San Francisco (TMASF), ran an extensive transportation survey to collect and analyze input from more than 1,200 City Hall employees. The results demonstrated that close to 75 percent of City Hall employees use alternative transportation, rather than single-occupancy vehicles, to commute to work.