Date of Award

3-2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Engineering Management

Department

Department of Systems Engineering and Management

First Advisor

Alfred E. Thal, Jr., PhD

Abstract

The 2007 Air Force Sustainable Development and Design Policy mandates the use of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED ) criteria for military construction projects. Additionally, the policy authorizes adding two percent of the original building budget to the total building budget in order to fund the resulting sustainable design costs. To determine if the specific sustainable design goals of this policy had statistical support in the population of LEED certified buildings, the author gathered construction, cost, and utility data on a sample of 160 LEED certified buildings. Simple correlation and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the resulting database. The correlation analysis suggests that this sample offers no statistically significant correlations between design variables. Furthermore, the descriptive statistics suggest that, although the Air Force policy will certainly achieve some of its goals, the two percent budget increase is likely to be too little to achieve LEED certification a majority of the time. Without additional design requirements, the analysis also suggests that the policy will not result in buildings that always achieve the utility reduction requirements of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and Executive Order 13423.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GEM-ENV-08-M14

DTIC Accession Number

ADA479909

Share

COinS