Her story begins a month earlier. That's when Suzanne Pattison, an employee with David Evans and Associates, Inc. (DEA), challenged her co-workers in Spokane and Coeur d'Alene to participate in "Bike to Work Week." As an incentive, she promised that if the employees' cumulative miles for the week added up to 166 miles or more, she would commute to the Spokane office from her home on Schweitzer Mountain in Sandpoint, Idaho—a round-trip commute that would also total 166 miles.

Angela Chung, LEED AP, a project manager in DEA's Bellevue, Wash., office, couldn't wait for the firm to develop a firm-wide LEED training initiative. Instead, she and colleague Sarah Hicks, a design engineer and the office sustainability coordinator, launched a regional LEED study group for the five DEA offices in the Puget Sound area. For seven weeks, participants used personal time during their lunch hour to study and share the details of LEED for New Construction.

Pattison, Chung, and Hicks are just a few of the many employee champions of sustainability efforts within DEA. Leaders in their own right, they personify the company's freshly minted strategic direction to become leaders in sustainable resource management and carbon reduction solutions.

Like an increasing number of the firm's public and private clients, DEA recognizes that the resource-constrained future requires fresh approaches to planning and meeting human needs. Consequently, the company has espoused an on-going commitment to sustainability. While several of the most successful internal sustainability programs and client projects have come from employee-driven initiatives rather than management mandates, the executive leadership also strongly supports sustainability.

Setting the stage for sustainability
Several years ago, DEA's executive leadership felt the need to transition from an unnamed effort to a more formal sustainability initiative. In 2003, the company adopted a new core purpose statement focused on improving the quality of life and stewardship of the built and natural environment.

Next, DEA hired an environmental professional to lead the company's sustainability efforts. To fully integrate sustainability at the strategic level, the director of sustainability reports to the CEO and meets monthly with a corporate steering committee consisting of the CEO, the CFO, the director of human resources, and other senior executives and managers. This group is responsible for making critical decisions on implementing the sustainability program both operationally and financially.

The director of sustainability guides both DEA's internal planning efforts and external actions to reduce the company's environmental footprint, as well as efforts to incorporate cutting-edge technologies and approaches resulting in sustainable solutions for clients. This position also oversees the work of office-level sustainability committees that identify and implement actions to meet the goals of the steering group.

Creating the right conditions
Internal surveys conducted in 2003 and 2008 revealed that an increasing majority of DEA employees regard sustainability as a necessary and important business driver.
One key goal of DEA's corporate sustainability efforts, therefore, is to convert this latent interest into pathways for individuals to make real and measurable improvements in bottom-line sustainable performance. This fosters individual involvement and stimulates the next wave of creativity.

Growing from grassroots
Some of DEA's most popular sustainability initiatives—such as Pattison's "Bike to Work" challenge—are organically grown at the office level. In another instance, an employee-driven effort in April 2008 challenged others to take alternative modes of transportation to work. Several offices participated and the total number of days in which DEA employees took alternative modes of transportation during that timeframe was 2,616.

Denver employee Tom Girard wanted more recycling options in his office building. He worked with the property manager, Westfield Management, to address the recycling needs of the entire 12-story building. Together, they coordinated the fragmented, and in some cases non-existent, recycling efforts of the tenants. The result was a more comprehensive recycling program for the entire building.

Employees in the Portland, Ore., office conducted several building waste audits, which resulted in improving recycling options and adding composting bins in each kitchen. One corporate employee saw another way to reduce energy use with "Vending Misers" a device to power down office vending machines when not in use. The employee has helped other offices get the devices installed.

Wherever possible, DEA supports and nurtures these kinds of local efforts and in some cases, as with the Puget Sound region's LEED training sessions, the company works to make them firm-wide initiatives.

The evidence can be seen firm-wide. Employees work with local recycling centers to recycle paper, cardboard, plastics, and aluminum. All purchased copy and printer paper must contain 100 percent recycled content, and offices cannot purchase products that use polystyrene. Nearly 85 percent of DEA staff surveyed in 2008 said they practice double-sided photocopying and 75 percent reuse office paper before recycling it.

DEA is also committed to using sustainable alternatives for firm-wide energy consumption. In 2005, the company purchased Green Tags through the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. By 2009, 100 percent of DEA's firm-wide energy use 7 million kilowatt-hours per year will be from sustainable, renewable sources. At that rate, DEA will subsidize renewable energy representing an annually savings of nearly 10 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.

Quantifying sustainable practices
Making environmental performance visible, meaningful, and measurable is another key goal. In fiscal year 2008, DEA added sustainability on the list of desired results along with client satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and profitability. That means sustainability is now linked to the company's bottom line performance and to financial compensation for employees.

Part of the sustainability metric required that all its offices have an approved sustainability plan for 2008. Office sustainability plans include components such as sustainability communications, transportation, resource conservation, waste prevention and recycling, and external services.
A popular component in each office's sustainability plan is the commute trip reduction program.

This incentive program was designed to encourage employees to use alternative forms of transportation such as walking, biking, carpooling, or using mass transit for their daily work commutes. Although the incentives vary from office to office, most offer financial compensation for each trip taken using an alternative transportation mode. For example, employees in the Portland, Ore., office can earn as much as $6 a day by biking to and from work.

Corporate leadership and clients
DEA's 2003 survey found that 17 percent of its employees had participated on a sustainable project. That number increased to 50 percent—a 33-percent increase according to the 2008 survey.

Training and knowledge-sharing has been an important aspect of increasing the firm's work on sustainable projects. All offices are required to support at least one staff training or conference event on sustainable development, green building, sustainable design, or a related topic by the end of the year. Offices are also encouraged to conduct one in-office brownbag training session on a sustainability-related topic each quarter.

Looking to the future
DEA is proud of the accomplishments achieved thus far with its sustainability program, but the firm also recognizes there is still much to do. Currently, DEA is setting new strategic goals for the sustainability program. The ultimate goal is to reach a point where sustainability is completely integrated into the fabric of the company.

At the same time, DEA recognizes an internal focus is not enough. The firm's strategic direction emphasizes leadership in the broader community by partnering with agencies, colleagues, non-governmental organizations, and even competitors to help meet both public and private client needs while minimizing consumption of natural resources.

For example, Senior Vice President and Southwest Regional Manager Roger Baele helped found the Friends of the West Valley Recreation Corridor in Maricopa County, Ariz. The Friends—a consortium of nearly 1,000 volunteers, public and private sector representatives, and community leaders—is leading a multi-year effort to transform a barren, 30-mile floodplain into a multi-use, multi-modal, flood-control habitat and recreation corridor.

The industry's landscape is changing. Clients are moving ahead cautiously in increasingly uncertain times, so the "business-as-usual" approach won't work any more. The industry is faced with issues demanding increasingly integrated and complex solutions. DEA is committed to helping clients understand, anticipate, and navigate that landscape, helping them create better solutions that can both save money and minimize the use of non-renewable resources.
It is a tremendous opportunity for the firm to contribute to the health and restoration of its communities and to create legacy projects that will benefit generations to come.


Paul Horton is the director of sustainability for David Evans and Associates, Inc. He can be reached at 503-223-6663 or pvh@deainc.com.