The Top 100 Green Contractors

By Gary Tulacz
This article originally appeared on enr.com

The green-building market is in transition. At its outset, it was a novelty, a marketing tool or sometimes a market imposed by regulation. Now, sustainable building slowly is evolving from an arena of idealism to one where owners are realizing tangible benefits, making green building more enticing to owners who may have been skeptical in the past.

The depth of the penetration of green building into the construction realm can be seen in the volume of projects now being built to sustainable standards. For ENR’s Top 100 Green Contractors, 2008 was a big year. The Top 100 generated $38.69 billion in revenue in 2008 from projects registered with or certified by third-party rating groups under objective environmental or sustainable development standards. This marks a startling 70% over $22.76 billion for the group in 2007. The 2008 figure amounts to 26.2% of the Top 100’s total contracting revenue for 2008.

For most contractors, the construction downturn has taken a toll on their sales. However, many say interest in green or sustainable construction continues to grow in the work they have won. “Green is no longer a fringe activity but a core competency for us,” says Michael Deane, vice president and chief sustainability officer for Turner Construction.

Deane says that while 30% of Turner’s revenue last year was from green projects, 40% of its backlog at the beginning of the year was green and 50% of new sales currently are being registered with the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. “Admittedly, this is with a smaller volume of projects, but it shows that owners continue to be focused on sustainable building,” Deane says.

“The market in general is clearly down, but in virtually every project we see, sustainability and energy efficiency is considered,” says Tom Roger, director of high-performance buildings for Gilbane Building Co. While owners are concerned about project viability in the troubled economy, he says operating costs are always a part of the equation.

The market for green building is big and growing. “The last I checked, there were about 21,000 projects registered under LEED, and about 2,800 have been certified under USGBC,” says Peter Skirbst, vice president of Haskell. In addition, he says about 14,000 residential units have been registered under LEED, with 2,200 units—both in single-family home developments and multi-unit residential—being certified.

Sustainable design and construction is now penetrating most markets. A few years ago, the health-care market and labs were lagging because of the complexity of the jobs. “But hospitals and labs are big energy users, and most of the ones we are seeing now are going after some level of LEED certification,” says Tracy Browne, integrated project delivery director for Balfour Beatty Construction.

Another market beginning to show interest in building green is the hotel and hospitality sector. “This is a market that the U.S. is only beginning to deal with, but the European hospitality market has been building sustainably for years,” says Ray Cullen, director of project planning and development for Hensel Phelps.

How Green Is My Portfolio?

The corporate market has been reacting to customer demand for environmentally friendly products and companies. “Many consumer-products clients started out with environmentally friendly packaging, but this has now been pushed to the production and distribution processes as well,” says Darryl Wernimont, director of Haskell. He notes some of Haskell’s core markets have been leaders in green building, like the food and beverage market. He says Nestle and Pepsico led on green building, but others companies have since gotten onboard.

Wernimont also notes that Dow Jones has come out with a Dow Jones Sustainability Index, in which firms adjudged as environmentally friendly, using factors including green building, are identified and have their own investment rating. Many corporations are anxious to be listed on the index, he says.

The recession may actually artificially boost the percentage of work involving green building. “As the private...