The Miramar College Administration Building is a 17,258-square-foot education project located in San Diego, CA. With over 200 daily visitors, the building was designed to be a high-performance, energy– and water– efficient project. Verdical Group provided:

• LEED Project Management (BD+C v3 Gold Certified)

The project originally targeted LEED Silver certification, but Verdical Group was able to work with the project team to incorporate a variety of innovative green building strategies that allowed the team to outperform the original target certification level and achieve LEED BD+C v3 Gold certification. Key to this project’s success was an integrated design and construction team spearheaded by Pankow Builders that focused on close coordination between all disciplines in order to maximize sustainability performance throughout the design and construction phase. 

The project is sited on a dense urban campus with many basic services within a half-mile walking distance, which promotes community connectivity. The building’s close proximity to public transportation promotes car-free living and an associated reduction in carbon emissions. In fact, there are so many bus lines within a quarter mile of the site that an exemplary performance point for double transit ridership was awarded on the LEED scorecard.  

The project team was able to meet high-performance energy targets with a 24% reduction in energy demand below ASHRAE 90.1-2007 requirements through the use of multiple energy-saving strategies, one of the most notable being daylighting. With at least 90% of all occupied seated spaces in the building having access to daylight and views, there was less need for artificial lighting, as well as more satisfied and productive occupants. The project team was also able to meet high water efficiency targets through the use of public agency-sourced, non-potable treated water to replace 100% of all potable water used for landscaping. A 54% reduction in total water use for landscaping also was achieved through the use of low and medium water use vegetation. The team also prioritized the use of recycled content and regional materials, with 21% of materials (by cost) sourced regionally (within 500 miles) and 19% of materials (by cost) containing recycled content.