The multitiered LEED system motivates companies to "do a few more things to move up," added Greg Bell, director of global communications for JohnsonDiversy. The company’s Racine, Wis., headquarters earned a gold rating.

CII’s latest research will be presented again at a public conference in Austin, Texas, Sept. 20-21.

Why U.K. Firms Work "Green"
Government Regulation Enhance Relations with Clients
Competitive Edge Reduce Legal Risks
Client Procurement Policy Invest in the Future
Enhance Reputation Enhance Relations with Community

Long-term Survival of
    Business

Peer Pressure within the
    Industry
Source: Engineering sustainability, December 2003

Saudi Aramco Quantifies Results

Hammad Implementing lessons pays off.

When Saudi Aramco joined the Construction Industry Institute in 1993, it found that its projects were 25% more expensive and took twice as long to build as those of its peers in the group.

The company now offers proof that implementing CII best practices gets results. Its 2004 benchmarking study showed "quantifiable evidence that its costs are down 10%," said Ali A. Al-Ajmi, vice president for project management. "Our project cycle time continues to trend downward, and our lost time incident frequency is down 50% in five years."

The company does about $2.5 billion worth of construction per year with about 150 projects active and 30 to 40 new starts a year. "We found we had significant resistance to change," said Al-Ajmi, but we made a management commitment to the program, "holding managers accountable for results and providing optimum tools for change."

Saudi Aramco set up a team of professionals to work with project managers to implement the CII program from project planning workshops to schedule optimization, scope control, constructibility and lessons learned. The company found that 156 projects, which implemented zero or only one best practice, experienced an average of 4.7% schedule growth. But another group of 99 projects, which implemented two or more best practices, had an average of only 1.4% schedule creep.

Mohammed A. Hammad, manager of the Hawiyah Natural Gas Liquids Recovery project department, said Aramco now has almost 300 "lessons learned" in its database. The lessons are submitted by engineers and reviewed for usefulness by a panel of experts in various disciplines. Lessons from the database are "implemented" at the beginning of projects and more lessons are "collected" at the end.

"Facilitators spent 3 days at the Hawiyah site talking to 100 people and writing lessons on the spot," said Hammad. It took time to motivate field engineers to participate, but once they see the results, they buy in very quickly. "Now we get unsolicited lessons."

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...Committee, said NGS’ $7-million investment increased the real estate value of the buildings by $24 million, which in turn increased the society’s "equity, credit rating and borrowing capacity." Arny said the performance contract that the group had with Johnson Controls "put the service provider and the owner on the same side of the fence."