Similarly, the Carbon Neutral Energy Solutions Laboratory project successfully showcased the steps to minimize the carbon footprint of a lab building. The lab has most of the bells and whistles of energy conservation, including energy-efficient heating, ventilating and air-conditioning technologies; a 1,200-panel, 296-kW solar photovoltaic (PV) array; and daylighting systems.

The lab, which was finished last fall, recently received an Award of Merit for Distinction in High-Performance Buildings from the National Institute of Building Sciences' Sustainable Buildings Industry Council.

From the outset, the university stressed to the design-build team of HDR Architecture and Gilbane Building Co. that the project would be a case study in achieving net-zero energy use, which means that, in a year, the building would produce as much energy as it uses.

A net-zero goal is typically limited to smaller projects, but "they saw this as a challenge to see how close they could get to net-zero with a real building, a real budget and real project constraints," says Princeton Porter, a designer in the local office of HDR.

While understanding a client's expectations is critical on any project, it is even more so at Georgia Tech, because the building is part of the research itself, adds Paul Stewart, the lab's project manager in Gilbane's local office.

When anyone would ask about the payback period for the lab's solar panels, "Georgia Tech would respond that 'the payback is immediate, as people from all over the world see what we built here [and] they are going to take these energy-saving ideas back to their communities and places of business,'" says Stewart.

Risk management is important to Georgia Tech. Even the metrics for assessing energy use and building system performance are subject to scrutiny. Dissatisfied with the disparity between existing predictive energy models used to validate LEED performance versus actual energy consumption, Jones and his department teamed with faculty and graduate students in the school of mechanical engineering to research and create a new predictive analysis for energy consumption modeling.

"The higher accuracy helps us make the right decisions [about] what we want to achieve, and ensures the systems operate the way they're supposed to," Jones says.

At Georgia Tech, a building is not just a building. It is a learning tool and part of the learning process.

"They will continue to run energy models and analyze the performance of the building against our early assumptions, which results in the designers and constructors understanding how decisions could positivity or negatively affect the building over the long term," says Stewart.

Analyzing how individual pieces of equipment actually perform relative to the performance data/assumptions provided by manufacturers will lead to better equipment in the future for the entire building industry, he adds.

Because Georgia Tech's ambitious design and construction standards are well known, consultants and contractors go in to every project knowing they must live up to high expectations. They also know they will likely learn something.