Ackerstein Sustainability

Rock Hall is a chemical and medical research laboratory located on UCSF's Mission Bay Campus in San Francisco. A 171,643 square foot facility housing 400 occupants, Rock Hall was awarded LEED-EB Silver certification in September, 2009. Ackerstein Sustainability collaborated with UCSF staff on all dimensions of this project, including the use of Labs21 for energy efficiency analysis and the adaptation of LEED-EB Version 2.0 for a lab setting. Additionally, many of the initiatives pursued in order to achieve this certification were implemented not only at Rock Hall, but on a campus-wide basis for all of the buildings on the Mission Bay Campus.

 Ackerstein Sustainability worked with CSU Long Beach to complete a LEED-EB:O&M certification program for the Horn Center, a 40,000 SF public building centrally-located on the CSU-LB campus. The Horn Center serves a variety of university populations, containing academic advising offices, a sprawling computer lab, the university remote emergency command center, and an art museum. For this reason, careful assessment of energy use patterns, water consumption, and occupancy flows was an essential part of this project. The Horn Center was successfully certified in 2013.

650 California Street benefited from a history of energy conservation measures and efficient operating practices that facilitated the adoption of sustainable operating procedures. 650 California Street achieved LEED Gold Certification in early 2011.
(Photo via Moed de Armas & Shannon, via sf.curbed.com)

The Vanguard Building is a 78,000 square foot office building in Oxnard, California owned and operated by the County of Ventura. In addition to an ambitious and comprehensive HVAC retrofit and water fixture upgrade that preceded the LEED project, Ackerstein Sustainability worked collaboratively with County staff to develop additional sustainability programmatic and operational improvements. County staff implemented strategies to encourage alternative transportation, integrated pest management, green cleaning and purchasing procedures. In addition, a compressed workweek program at the site also enabled the County to further reduce carbon emissions and environmental impact. Most importantly, the combination of system upgrades and operational improvements resulted in a significant improvement in building energy efficiency demonstrated by the building's current Energy Star score of 77. In 2010 the Vanguard Building was awarded LEED Silver certification.

The Hayden facility in Scottsdale, Ariz., is part of General Dynamics C4 Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics, specializing in communication and information technology and systems integration. This highly complex, energy-intensive defense contracting facility occupies 850,667 square feet and supports over 2,000 occupants. facility supports a large variety of government programs and consequently, it exhibits highly-unique energy use patterns. This characteristic of the building required an exhaustive and collaborative approach between Ackerstein Sustainability and the General Dynamics team in order to demonstrate compliance with LEED energy efficiency requirements. By doing so, and focusing upon implementing compliant waste management, green cleaning, and green purchasing policies, the Hayden facility was successfully LEED-EB certified in November, 2009.

555 California is a 1.8 million square-foot landmark building located in downtown San Francisco, home to a wide variety of commercial tenants as well as a handful of retail tenants. 555 California has implemented a comprehensive sustainability program based on LEED guidelines, integrating sustainable purchasing, waste management, and cleaning procedures as well as a number of industry best practices relating to site management and pest control. The building is highly energy efficient, and supports extensive use of local alternative transportation options by its occupants. 555 California achieved LEED Certification in mid-2011.