AIA 2030
Sustainability Action Plan
Vision We understand that climate change has intensified due to human activities, and architects have a responsibility to exercise leadership in the creation and maintenance of the built environment. We embrace the potential of regenerative design as a means to reduce our global environmental impact. While sustainable design is increasingly the norm for designers, builders, and owners, we need to work together to do more. This means, at minimum, reducing carbon emissions associated with manufacturing and construction, and exploring with our clients how building construction and operations can mitigate climate change.
Our role as architects is one of leader and visionary.
Local issues have global impacts and acting locally has never been more important. Our commitment to resource reduction and healthy material selection is ongoing. We believe that every person and every project has an important role in the design and construction process. We believe that sustainability is not just about climate change and environmental health but also includes our commitment to social and economic justice. As an office, we do this through our designs, office operations, and office policies. Joining the AIA’s 2030 Commitment to assess our projects’ performance and use data-driven design to work towards the decarbonization of the built environment is one of many ways we are choosing to act. As HMFH has grown, so too has our commitment to responsible practice.
Research & Outreach Research is an essential component of our design process. New aesthetic and technical solutions emerge in response to evolving needs, codes, rating systems, product developments, and building science. HMFH supports participation in events that encourage research and dissemination of information including:
Ask. Design. Learn.
Materials Research
As more information becomes available on the environmental impact of materials, we must analyze the products we specify to ensure they align with our goals for healthy and sustainable buildings. Material research is an ongoing process of educating ourselves, our clients, and manufacturers, whether it concerns performance, transparency or embodied carbon.
Innovation Fund
The firm funds employee-initiated research into a wide range of topics that affect our built and natural environment.
Health & Wellness
HMFH is involved in statewide efforts to showcase school designs that promote equitable access to healthy and sustainable school buildings.
HMFH ARCHITECTS
Outreach & Advocacy Involvement within our communities gives us the ability to understand and to engage in local issues. It offers us the opportunity to advocate for our sustainable vision while continuing our education and sharing our research and projects outside the office. Our involvement includes:
Advocacy
In addition to being signatories of the AIA Material Pledge, we are leading an initiative to accelerate the sustainability of lighting products. Called the Lighting Advocacy Letter, it creates a collective dialogue with lighting manufacturers around a common framework for sustainability.
Volunteering
Earth Day community clean ups, USGBC’s Green Apple Day of Service, Design Thinking Day, Wentworth SummerLAB, Eco Rise Program, Mayor’s Summer Jobs Program Boston Private Industry Council
Teaching
Boston Architectural College, Northeastern, MassArt, Rhode Island School of Design
Conferences & Webinars
HMFH employees regularly attend and present at a variety of conferences related to architecture and planning (i.e. ABX, GreenBuild, NESEA’s BuildingEnergy, and local and national conferences with NEEP, CHPS and A4LE).
Workshops
HMFH employees participate in sustainability-focused presentations to the public and are often in-depth explorations of a concept. One of our Sustainability Leaders helped develop Embodied Carbon 101, a program hosted by the Boston Society of Architects and supported by the Carbon Leadership Forum to share knowledge on how to incorporate embodied carbon considerations into projects.
Ask. Design. Learn.
Memberships
HMFH ARCHITECTS
Training & Education Our Sustainability Committee is a unique resource for the office, meeting regularly to update, implement and assess the firm’s sustainability goals.
Ask. Design. Learn.
Monthly Office Meetings
Once a month the office meets as a whole to review the progress of each project and share upcoming events. This is also a time to share announcements and communicate vital information learned throughout the month.
WUPU “Wake Up Pin Up”
HMFH has a regular Friday morning presentation to announce new initiatives, explore new technology, and otherwise reinforce our creative collaboration. The sustainability committee uses WUPU to present new materials, products, systems and approaches to sustainable design and construction so that the entire office has the latest knowledge and resources.
HMFH Training Program
Working with USGBC Massachusetts and our partner Prellwitz Chilinski Associates, HMFH provides 400 hours of training through 50+ continuing education courses over a period of two years. Topics include efficient MEP design, energy modeling, daylighting, sustainable acoustics and high-performance wall assemblies.
HMFH ARCHITECTS
Design & Approach Sustainability is most successfully integrated into a project when the owner, design team, and contractors are committed to establishing, prioritizing, and implementing relevant goals. Our job as architects is to be an effective guide and leader in this process.
Ask. Design. Learn.
HMFH ARCHITECTS
Design Process Our design process begins with visioning by a broad range of stakeholders to define and prioritize environmental, social, and economic goals for the project. These goals created in the visioning process establish a framework that will define and prioritize project strategies for the remainder of the design and construction phases. Innovative programming, sensitive design solutions, and environmentally aware decisions lead to results that the owners, occupants, and facility operators can appreciate for their aesthetic and environmental value. Developing each of the goals with an understanding of efficiency and costs associated with each improvement allows owners to make critical decisions.
Ask. Design. Learn.
CENTER FOR SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT DAYLIGHT AUTONOMY
% of Occupied Hours @ 500 Lux
Our research allows us to evaluate design trends that can be reviewed with clients. We use the appropriate design tools, systems and resources we have developed to maximize efficiencies for our clients including life cycle analysis, energy modeling, BIM, and lighting illumination analysis to define the most environmentally efficient solutions. We continue to use tools to improve the design decisions we make. This ranges from digital tools such as Climate Studio, Tally, and Covetool to fabrication tools such as the 3D printer and laser cutter which allow us to model design options. In addition to specific project-based research, our office shares lessons learned from projects in construction, and solicits feedback from previous clients by undertaking PostOccupancy Evaluations. POE studies help inform decisions about new and ongoing projects.
HMFH ARCHITECTS
Fales Elementary School Total Energy Use Intensity (EUI) = 24.9 17 %
Components of Energy Use
Ve ntilation
Fales Elementary School Total Energy Use Intensity (EUI) = 24.9
32%
P lu g Loa d
17%
8%
GEO
THERMAL
P H O T O V O LTA I C S
32%
Plug Load
9%
1%
H ot Water
15%
18%
Pu mp s
P H O T O V O LTA I C S
H eating
Li g ht s
Ven t i
Cooling
HMFH ARCHITECTS
15%
Li ghts
18%
Pu mps
HMF
Ask. Design. Learn.
Once a project is complete, we believe it is imperative to evaluate the goals and strategies and verify their effect. We track metrics related to energy use and carbon to share with our clients, peers, and inform future projects. Whether it is budgetary or building performance data, this information helps support decisions throughout the design process and can lead to the reevaluation of current assumptions.
HMFH ARCHITECTS
< Bristol County Agricultural High School is the first public school in Massachusetts to utilize composting toilets along with other strategies to reduce water use by a projected 50% even as enrollment grows by 40%.
Ask. Design. Learn.
HMFH ARCHITECTS
We embrace a variety of third-party verification systems as an integral component in the verification of our work. The following rating systems are used on our projects as one method of verifying that established goals have been met.
USGBC’s LEED for Schools USGBC’s LEED for Homes Collaborative for High Performance Schools (NE-CHPS) Enterprise Green Communities As a participant in the AIA 2030 Commitment we are continually tracking and updating project performance through the shared database. This provides good relative performance data between our office’s projects and those of other participating firms.
Ask. Design. Learn.
2,393,303 sf of LEED Certified Educational Projects
HMFH ARCHITECTS S AU G U S M I D D L E H I G H S C H O O L , L E E D P L AT I N U M C E RT I F I E D
Office Operations & Policy At the time of this writing (end of 2021), we are transitioning from what was expected to be a temporary mode of a remote work during the SARS COVID-19 pandemic to a new and probably hybrid form of in-office and remote work. This collective experience has had a profound impact on our lives and how we work.
Ask. Design. Learn.
As many of us continue to work from home, office operations have become more individualized. While the impact is hard to assess, we presume that the decentralized nature of our work and potentially less efficient performance of our home offices have resulted in an increase in our operational carbon footprint. However, travel is one of the largest contributors to our carbon footprint, and because we, our consultants, and clients are traveling to far fewer meetings and construction sites, we believe our ability to telecommute has offset other increases in emissions. The evolution in the way we work and opportunities to reduce our carbon footprint will continue beyond the pandemic well into the future. In 2019 we marked HMFH’s 50th anniversary with a commitment to make our office operations carbon neutral. Each year we analyze all of our office operations, including project-related travel and commuting. Native Energy assists us in reviewing our collected data and compares us to similar businesses to determine the quantity of carbon offsets needed to achieve carbon neutrality. From list of projects around the world that use carbon credits, we vote yearly on a project to support. To date we have funded the following: 2020: Haiti Clean Water Fund 2019: Honduras Coffee Growers Clean Water Project
HMFH ARCHITECTS
Operations Office Design
Our open office provides abundant daylight and access to views from every workstation. Daylighting strategies paired with high reflectance interior surfaces achieves a lighting power density of 0.5 w/sf when all the lights in the office are on, half the IECC 2009 design basis of 1.0 w/sf at the time of its design. The use of chilled beams and multiple control points and LEDs for task and overall light sources all contribute to personal control and comfort. Sustainable materials, including linoleum flooring and FSC-certified bamboo millwork further embody our commitment to the environment.
Energy Use
The HMFH office is located in Cambridge, MA. We are able take advantage of the City’s aggregate electricity program that allows us to purchase 100% renewable electricity. Power savings modes on all computers and monitors minimize energy use.
Telecommuting/ Teleconferencing
As a result of the global pandemic and a shift to a hybrid work environment, our day-to-day operations have become more virtual. The office computer system was set up to allow employees to telecommute. While this was intended for convenience, and to reduce vehicle trip miles, remote collaboration is now the office standard via software tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams and cloud-based programs and file storage.
Materials Library
Material Bank and mindful Materials are tools that we use to search for healthier material options and manage our library of material samples. In pilot programs with both companies HMFH can order and then easily return product samples to a central warehouse to reduce waste and carbon impacts.
Ask. Design. Learn.
Culture The office supports the use of public transportation and bike sharing programs to get to and from the office and subsidizes membership in ZipCar. For seven years, HMFH has participated in Green Streets’ Walk/Ride Day Corporate Challenge to encourage employees to choose healthier, low emission modes of transportation. Recycling is a critical part of our firm culture. We recycle our paper waste into sketchbooks and notebooks for employees and have regular recycling collections for all manner of work and personal electronics. We donate our architectural product samples to an organization that redistributes them to schools, and wherever possible, we direct the remainder of our waste materials to municipal recycling programs.
HMFH ARCHITECTS
S AU G U S M I D D L E H I G H S C H O O L
F LO R I D A R U F F I
2021 Rankings #48 in Engineering News Record’s
Top Green Design Firms #166 in Architectural Record’s
Top 300 Architectural Firms #16 in Building Design & Construction’s
K-12 School Sector Giants Report
Ask. Design. Learn.
IN RIDLEY SCHOOL
HMFH ARCHITECTS
WINTHROP MIDDLE/HIGH SCHOOL
B R I STO L C O U N T Y AG R I C U LT U R A L H I G H S C H O O L
48
55
73
Woodland ES
90
74
69
62
45
39
51
57
53
55
79 57
29 2012
2013
FR Ridley ES
74
81
Saugus MHS
60
ted
Carver ES
al/Predic
Clark MS
EUI Actu
Winthrop MHS
99
Bresnahan ES
119
Pell ES
134
Tahanto MHS
WINTHROP MIDDLE/HIGH SCHOOL
Fairhaven Wood ES
Wayland HS
Abbot-Downing ES
EUI Code
McAuliffe ES
CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND THE ENVIRONMENT
63 48
48 39
33
2014
2016
2017
2018
7
2020 Ask. Design. Learn.
2021
1
In looking at our next 50 years, we are designing buildings with less negative environmental impacts. This will assure healthier students, resilient and sustainable communities, and a more viable future for all of us. Operational vs Embodied Carbon are both important components of our designs and need equal attention. As electrical grids begin to decarbonize and indoor environmental systems become more efficient, design professionals must turn critical attention to reducing embodied carbon in building materials.
34
2022
JQUS MHS
Bristol Plymouth RTHS
58
51 25
Arlington HS
Chapman MS
<
Recent HMFH project actual and predicted EUI compared to code baseline. Dashed lines show trending improvement both in code and designed projects. Date indicate the opening year of the project.
Fales ES
Bristol Aggie CSE
76
Goals
•
Continue to track transportation, power, waste, material use annually within the office to reduce our carbon footprint and provide a summary every three years. Our goal would be to reduce our operational carbon footprint by 10%.
•
Roll out workflow guidelines with sustainability milestones for projects in design.
•
Have project sustainability charrettes with clients at each phase of the design process.
•
Have internal sustainability design reviews at each phase of the design process.
•
Have monthly project team reporting in-house and for external project committees.
•
Meet 2030 EUI Targets
•
The Sustainability Committee will develop an energy literacy survey for the entire office to assess gaps in knowledge and offer sustainability education sessions at WUPU.
•
Track EUI on every project and present at every office lunch.
53 41
37 25
2024
HMFH ARCHITECTS
29
2025
27
hmfh.com