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- Grand Rapids Community College and West Michigan - Leaders in Green Building Training
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- We Want to Hear from You!
Grand Rapids Community College and West Michigan - Leaders in Green Building Training
by Brian Shultz
The January issue of the Wall Street Journal reported that a “green gap” exists in environmentally friendly construction. “As environmentally friendly construction takes off, a question looms: Who’s going to do all the work? Demand is booming for environmentally friendly construction. But it is booming so fast that there aren’t enough skilled professionals to do the work.” This may be true in other parts of the country, but it is not true in Grand Rapids and the West Michigan area.
Grand Rapids has 32 LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, United States Green Building Council, USGBC) certified commercial green buildings, more per capita than any other city in the United States, with another 50 on the drawing boards. This fact, in conjunction with the commitment to purchase renewable energy, prompted Fast Company magazine in October to name Grand Rapids “America’s Greenest City.”
Keeping pace with this level of green building activity requires developing green building training programs, a primary focus of the Grand Rapids Community College/Tassell Michigan Technical Education Center (M-TEC) since 2004. At that time a new Job Training program, Residential Construction, was developed in partnership with Habitat for Humanity of Kent County. Habitat and the M-TEC became part of a pilot project for the newly written LEED for Homes standards, and in 2005 the nation's first LEED for Homes Certified “Affordable Home” was built. Since then two LEED certified Habitat homes have been built per year by the GRCC Residential Construction program, with one of the homes achieving LEED’s second highest rating, Gold, in 2007. As a result of the success of this program, Habitat announced in 2007 that a $600,000 grant from the Wege Foundation would be used to provide LEED certification for all future Habitat homes in Kent County.
Building upon the success of the Residential Construction program, M-TEC entered into a second job training partnership with Habitat in 2008 to perform LEED certified total-gut-rehab home construction. This program is called Construction Remodeling. Older existing homes that have been acquired by Habitat will be renovated, remodeled, and rebuilt following the LEED ReGreen Guidelines and some will achieve LEED for Homes certification. The first home is scheduled to be completed by December of 2008, and the second home will be started in January of 2009. The Design Committee of the West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum is also a partner with this program. Through their efforts considerable materials, services, and expertise have been donated to make the start-up of the Construction Remodeling program a success.
In addition to the Job Training Residential and Remodeling programs, the Construction Trades program at M-TEC introduced a green building certification program for construction workers in 2008 called Green Advantage. It is a nationally recognized “environmental certification for building related practitioners – primarily contractors, subcontractors, and trades people.” Two Green Advantage courses were delivered in 2008 and several courses are scheduled for 2009, including courses that will be delivered at other community colleges to “jump start” their green building programs.
Complementing the green building training programs at GRCC are the green building programs offered through the West Michigan Chapter of the USGBC, most notably the LEED Accredited Professional preparation courses. The National Association of Home Builders also offers a Certified Green Professional program through Green Built Michigan. Both of these local organizations have been national leaders in green building training and work closely with GRCC to coordinate training programs.
All of the above programs teach students the necessary green building construction skills. But students also learn the concept of the “triple bottom line.” This concept is an integral part of all green building programs and it focuses on the social, environmental, and economic impacts that construction has on our world. Building a Habitat home for a family that is participating in the process through “sweat equity” is a meaningful experience that connects one to the community they live in. Learning how to restore natural habitats, create rain gardens, and implement household recycling connects one to the environment they live in. Building a home that is energy efficient, durable, and with healthy indoor air quality, teaches one how to balance the economics of short-term gain and long-term effects.
As America, West Michigan, and Grand Rapids continue to move toward the green economy, GRCC will continue to implement the green building training programs needed for the future workforce. As Thomas Freidman recently stated in his new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded: “The beauty of a green jobs program is that there is no question whatsoever, as building codes change and green technologies make retrofitting your home a no-brainer, that green-collar jobs will be there waiting for anyone who gets trained to do them.”
Brian Schultz is Construction Trades Manager with the Grand Rapids Community College, Michigan Technical Education Center. For more information contact him at BShultz@grcc.edu or at 616-234-3016.
See related article, from the Western Michigan Business Review, “Grand Rapids continues green dominance”