LEED-Silver Certification Date:

August 2013

The Hawkins family is the owner of record for Lot 5, Snowden Executive Park located in the City of Fredericksburg. In early 2011, the family entered into a long term lease agreement with the United States Department of Veteran’s Affairs to build an 11,000 SF building that would house the Community Based Outreach Center for the Fredericksburg region. The lease agreement required that the building and associated development would be built to the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver standards for green building. Welford Engineering provided site/civil engineering, LEED project management, environmental and survey related services on this project.

Welford Engineering was responsible for guiding the design and construction team through the lengthy LEED process. In the early stages of the design phase, Welford Engineering led a team brainstorming session called a “charette” to identify potential opportunities for obtaining LEED credits and to map out the course to achieve LEED-Silver certification for the project. One of the early opportunities for achieving points included the design of a rainwater harvesting system. This system collects rainwater from the roof of the building and stores it underground. The collected rainwater is then used to irrigate the surrounding landscaping. This system not only reduces the environmental impact from stormwater, but saves the owner money and lessens the impact on the public water supply. Welford Engineering’s design solutions achieved 16 points towards LEED-Silver certification.