Increasingly the landscapes we build are being designed to contribute more directly to our overall sustainability goals, including cost and performance. This has resulted in an ever more complex project development profile where a site design’s spatial arrangement and features are more deeply integrated into the functionality of the facility, and supportive of its environmental context, on the whole. This modified approach has required the development of supportive landscape features most often intended to mimic natural environmental functions in order to provide ecosystem services achieving elevated performance and reduced lifecycle cost to the project (e.g., stormwater management, carbon sequestration, heat island mitigation, habitat support).
In support of this increasingly complex and emerging landscape, the landscape architectural program has engaged in a series of performance analytics and site commissioning studies. These studies intend to:
- document operational performance;
- identify the direct and indirect series of intended benefits; and
- outline current and future efficiencies beyond a narrower and traditionally segmented approach to the development of a site.
The benefit of this effort is to chart forward a constructive and replicable method to ensure design and construction processes on major federal construction and site redevelopment projects are achieving intended performance and quality outcomes, while leveraging assets and technologies to reduce costs.
U.S. General Services Administration
