The Billingsley International Business Park 15, the first LEED-gold building in the city, set the bar for “green” construction in Plano. Because of the building’s progessive innovations, the city of Plano now requires any future city building project to be certified LEED gold.
The project team building the 185,439-sq-ft office building collected recycled materials and waste, reporting more than 1,680 tons of recycled materials. The recycling efforts by the contractor, Rogers-O’Brien, led to its receipt of the Environmental Star of Excellence from the city of Plano, which gave the company a $500 reward. The contractor in turn donated this money to the Plano Senior High School Environmental Club for planting trees.
Rogers-O’Brien also won North Central Texas Recycling Association’s Green 3 Recycling Award for construction and demolition in commercial construction.
Before the construction of the business park, there was no previous history of commercial construction foam recycling. Since the job—which generated three tractor-trailer loads of used Styrofoam—was completed, the foam recycling company on the project has solicited all other Dallas-Fort Worth-area general contractors, encouraging them to use similar conservation methods.
The project’s size and architectural detail made it a challenge to construct. The large size of the tilt-wall panels, each three-stories tall and 160,000 lbs, required the use of a 500-ton hydraulic crane. The site itself was an outcrop of limestone, so instead of buying stone for use on the project, the excavator used a large grinder instead of an excavator and turned the limestone into a base material for the building pad.
The reuse of the material helped garner LEED points, and also avoided the transport of 2,500 loads of rock.
Key Players
Submitted by: Rogers-O’Brien Construction
Owner: The Billingsley Co., Carrollton
General contractor: Rogers-O’Brien Construction, Dallas
Architect: Morrison Siefert Murphy, Dallas
Structural engineer: Datum Engineers Inc., Dallas
MEP engineer: Basharkhah Engineering Inc., Dallas
Civil engineer: Spiars Engineering, Plano
Landscape architect: Mesa Design Group, Dallas
Concrete contractor: Potter Concrete Ltd., Dallas
Electrical contractor: System Electric Co., Plano
HVAC and plumbing contractor: CBS Mechanical, Denton
Pool contractor: Fun ’n’ Sun Pools Inc., Irving
Painting contractor: RJS Painting Inc., Irving
