Over 300 People Celebrate 2011 BetterBricks Award Winners in Portland

The 2011 BetterBricks Awards event honored Oregon and SW Washington’s leading green building professionals who own, design, build and operate commercial buildings at the Portland Hilton hotel this morning. Kevin Kampschroer, Director of the Office of Federal High Performance Green Buildings for the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), was the keynote speaker. He spoke to over 300 attendees about his experience in overseeing the green building program for GSA with a focus on energy efficiency. Kampschroer also discussed the importance of including tenants in the decision-making process to get the best energy-saving and other resource-conserving results.

Winners and finalists were selected in the following categories:

• Owner/Decision Maker: Winner — Bill Wyatt, Executive Director, Port of Portland; Winner — Greg Herrenbruck, Director of Design and Construction, New Seasons
• Architecture: Winner — Lisa Petterson, Manager of Sustainability Group, SERA Architects; Finalist — Phil Beyl, Managing Principal, GBD Architects; Finalist — James Meyer, Principal, Opsis Architecture
• Design Engineer: Winner — Omid Nabipoor, President, Interface Engineering; Winner — Steven Straus, President, Glumac
• Facility Manager / Building Operations: Winner — Lewis & Clark Facilities Services Team; Finalist — Rose Quarter Operations Team
• Property Manager: Winner — Unico Portland Property Management Team
• Outstanding Industry Contribution: Winner — Mark Frankel, Technical Director, New Buildings Institute
• Emerging Leader: Winner — Kipp Baratoff, Partner/President, Equilibrium Capital Group, Gerding Edlen Sustainable Solutions
• Advocate: Winner — Elaine Aye, Principal, Green Building Services; Winner — Clark Brockman, Director of Sustainability Resources/Associate Principal, SERA Architects

To achieve high performance buildings, award winners have used and promoted a variety of best practices such as maximizing local climate in the design, employing early design decision-making and energy modeling, supporting building commissioning, educating tenants and brokers about sustainability and implementing better building operations. Their projects have achieved substantial energy savings, reduced building operation and maintenance costs and enhanced productivity of building occupants among other benefits.

Through its BetterBricks initiative, NEEA partnered with Energy Trust of Oregon, Stoel Rives, LLP and Heritage Bank to sponsor the Oregon/SW Washington Awards.