Turner Construction Company has released the results of its latest survey on Green Building and the news is good for sustainable practices. In its 2014 Green Market Barometer, released October 21, Turner found that companies remain committed to constructing green projects and value the financial benefits they provide owners and occupants.

Survey respondents also put importance on the benefits that green buildings provide for employee health and wellbeing and for hiring and retention of employees

Michael Deane, Turner's chief sustainability officer, said in a press release that while building owners continue to incorporate green features in buildings to reduce operating costs, they are seeing more organizations "paying closer attention to the positive impacts of green buildings on indoor environmental quality and employee satisfaction and productivity.”

The poll was Turner's sixth on this topic. It surveyed more than 300 executives who own or rent space or are involved in building design and construction.

The respondents said that when deciding whether or not to incorporate green features on their project, financial considerations were extremely important or very important to them. The financial factors most highly rated in the decision-making process to incorporate Green features in construction projects were energy efficiency, asking rents, ongoing operations and maintenance costs, and occupancy rates. 

When asked about new building projects, 65% of executives said it was extremely or very likely their organization would undertake new construction over the next 12 months, while 75% said the same about undertaking a renovation project.

The results also found that sustainable practices by vendors was a top concern. More than half of the executives said the level of a vendor’s sustainable practices was extremely or very important for their organization when choosing a supplier of goods and materials (56%) or a service provider (52%). Turner says these figures have climbed steadily since 2010, when they were 43% for suppliers and 39% for service providers.

When it came to building resiliency, 66% of the company bigwigs said that achieving resiliency is extremely or very important when their organization designs, constructs, or operates a building. This was explained as the ability to maintain or quickly resume building operations in the event of extreme weather conditions such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and drought.

With all the talk of drought recently, water efficiency naturally made it into the poll. The likelihood that respondents would incorporate improved water efficiency into new construction and renovation projects went up from 57% in 2012 to 71% this year.

The construction professionals also showed a continued concern in obtaining LEED ertification on construction projects. They additionally expressed a significantly increased interest in alternative rating systems such as Green Globes, EnergyStar, Living Building Challenge and others, with 43% of respondents saying they would be extremely or very likely to seek alternative certification, significantly more than the 2012 number of 17%.

Turner’s 2014 Green Building Market Barometer surveyed 312 executives in August 2014. The executives participating in the online survey were from the following principal types of companies: corporate and government owner-occupants and tenants (38%), construction (29%), architecture (29%), engineering (19%), real estate owners and developers (14%), and brokers/real estate service providers (8%).

Respondents are active in a wide variety of different types of buildings including office (79%), industrial (51%), retail (41%), healthcare (40%), data centers (37%), multi-unit residential (34%), R&D (33%), single-family homes (32%), higher education (32%), K- 12 education (29%), hotel (28%), aviation and transportation (19%), and sports and entertainment (17%).