Future of Engineering

From the outside, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s administrative office in Las Vegas looks like any other concrete building dotting the landscape of most American cities. But inside a technological revolution has occurred, putting the 1980s building on a path to become the greenest facility in Nevada and one of the greenest in the country. By using state-of-the-art automation to monitor and control lighting, heating, cooling and air quality — and making other ecologically smart choices, such as buying recycled office furniture and planting desert-friendly landscaping — the once-nondescript office building should serve as a model for energy-efficient building design across government. “This is going to be what I consider a demonstration building. It’s going to be one of the most technological buildings of its kind,” said Gillian Silver-Rodis, community relations manager for National Security Technologies, the NNSA contractor that works out of the facility. NNSA’s 3,000 contractor employees and 100 federal employees who work in Nevada manage the Nevada Test Site, a restricted-access location larger than Rhode Island where nuclear weapons were once tested and where experiments now are conducted on conventional weapons, hazardous materials and environmental technologies.

The overhauled building is just the type of green workspace the Energy Department has pledged to deliver throughout its bureaus and program offices in a quest to become the energy-efficiency leader in government. All agencies are under orders by Congress and the Bush administration to cut overall energy use and water consumption and increase their use of renewable energy.

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Labels: Energy-Environment-Engineering