DCI took its first big step into sustainability with the design and completion of Hollywood & Vine, a 1.7M-sf, hotel and residential mixed-use development on the historic Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, that earned LEED Silver certification – the firm’s first!

It was the beginning of a pursuit for greener, more sustainable building design.

The world’s first commercial building to achieve net-zero use of energy and water was completed on this date in Seattle. The Bullitt Center was also the city’s first building to complete the Living Building Pilot Program, which earned that status in 2015.

As the EOR on the project, DCI provided innovative, sustainably focused structural design services for this ground-breaking, six-story office building in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

With roots in the firm’s Austin office, which started with about 15 passionate members, the DCI Sustainability Committee was born! Formed to develop and direct sustainable design practices for the company, the Committee provides meaningful data to staff and project stakeholders regarding the environmental impact of their design choices; seeks out innovative and sustainable structural systems that add value to our projects and the whole of society.

To date, the Sustainability Committee has strong representation across DCI’s nation-wide offices; and, just as it did in its earlier days, encourages further discussions about sustainable development beyond code minimums and green programs requirements to make real, positive impacts on the built environment.

Because DCI holds sustainability in such high regard, the Sustainability Committee wanted to ensure that all technical staff at our firm have a basic understanding of embodied carbon in the built environment. This presentation put sustainability at the forefront of our internal conversation and introduced design considerations that all engineers should keep in mind while working to meet their projects’ unique needs.

Consisting of three separate buildings, The Mill Phase I was DCI’s first internal Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The design team developed three different designs for the larger office building at the schematic phase, which was a perfect opportunity for the DCI sustainability committee to perform a comparative LCA study. This consisted of an all-steel design, steel/mass timber hybrid design and all-mass timber design.

It gave DCI its first opportunity to demonstrate a new service to clients, develop its first LCA report and learn several LCA software programs. While this didn’t end up driving any design changes on the project, it led to the creation of several internal resources and sparked current LCA capabilities.

Not even a month later, DCI was contracted by B+H Architects to conduct an LCA as part of a proposal to the City of Seattle on a new bridge in West Seattle. The LCA was conducted to compare a typical concrete and steel-framed bridge with a hybrid bridge structure utilizing mass timber trusses. New internal tools were created to quickly calculate environmental impacts between the two conceptual designs.

Developed by the Sustainability Committee of the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the SE 2050 Commitment is a pledge by signatory firms—which includes DCI!—to better understand, reduce and ultimately eliminate embodied carbon in all projects by 2050.

Adding Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) language into DCI’s general notes template encourages the production of product and facility specific EPDs in DCI’s project regions, while adding regional Global Warming Potential (GWP) limits encourages the industry's development of low carbon materials and procurement of reduced impact materials on DCI’s projects, regardless of the project’s overall sustainability goals.

With sustainable projects and an internal committee well underway, it was clear a dedicated team focused entirely on these efforts would move the needle even farther. Sourced internally, DCI’s first Director and Sustainability Specialist, filled by Ethan Martin and Jessica Martinez, respectively, was the first step; followed closely by the firm’s first Principal in Charge of Sustainability, Roger Heeringa; and most recently, the firm’s first Sustainability Engineer, Arizona Dabrusin.

DCI committed even further to sustainability by sponsoring the Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF), a non-profit organization leading the way to decarbonize the built environment. With Committee members involved and active in their local CLF chapters, DCI is promoting knowledge sharing and hubs amongst designers, suppliers and builders who hold sustainability in high regard.

DCI achieved 5 LEED Version points on a project: 3 points for the whole-building LCA demonstrated a 12% reduction in global warming potential and over 10% reduction in two other impact categories; and reusing over 30% of the existing building structural elements earned 2 points. The 5 points earned are the maximum allowed by LEED for the Building Life-Cycle Impact Reduction credit.