University of Washington’s West Campus Utility Plant in Seattle Receives Envision Gold Award

WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 11, 2017) – The University of Washington’s West Campus Utility Plant in Seattle is the recent recipient of the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI) Envision Gold award. The Envision system rates sustainable infrastructure projects across the full range of environmental, social, and economic impacts.

The West Campus Utility Plant (WCUP) is a design-build project developed to expand central utility capacity for the University of Washington (UW). While the UW community is the primary user of the WCUP facility, the project team also worked with the local community to ensure the facility positively contributed to the broader university district, nearby neighborhoods, as well as the public. The project team also developed the utility plant project to align with several local infrastructure plans, including the UW Campus Master Plan, the West Campus Development Framework and the U District Strategic Plan. Several organizations worked in collaboration with UW to deliver the sustainable infrastructure project, including Mortenson Construction, Miller Hull, Arup, GGN, KPFF, and O’Brien and Company.

Conceived as an integral component of the broader community’s utility infrastructure, the WCUP project at UW was found to have commonalities with central utility plants that are more efficient, sustainable, and easier to operate, versus other types of utilities located within each of the campus’s many buildings. In this way, the WCUP has greatly improved infrastructure integration on campus.

Many stakeholders were consulted throughout the design of this project. Stakeholder feedback was sought, and concerns raised by stakeholders were explicitly addressed by the project team in the facility’s design, including visual impacts, noise and vibration, emissions, stormwater, and tree preservation.

“Recognizing that Envision was the most appropriate third-party rating system for our new West Campus Utility Plant, the University of Washington made the early decision to target Envision Silver verification,” said John Palewicz, director of major capitol projects at the University of Washington. “Through the collaborative efforts of everyone on our progressive design-build team, we actually surpassed our initial target and are thrilled to have received Envision Gold verification. We understand that this is one of the first Envision verified projects for a higher education building in the United States and hope that our example inspires our other peer institutions to follow in our footsteps.”

As a collaborative effort between ISI and the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, the Envision system rates the impact of sustainable infrastructure projects as a whole. The ISI Envision system measures sustainable infrastructure in five categories: Quality of Life, Leadership, Natural World, Resource Allocation, and Climate and Risk. These key areas contribute to the positive social, economic and environmental impacts on a community. 

For more information, visit ISI Envision.