A Sustainable Design Perspective

There are three fundamental questions we ask ourselves before we move forward on any project:

• Is it needed?
• Will it provide economic and cultural benefit to the community?
• Is it environmentally responsible design and construction? 

Those core questions serve as our guide in the quest for creating what's best from a social, economic and environmental perspective.

Our Commitment to Social Responsibility

Our business is bringing concepts to life; to develop, design and construct spaces for buildings and people to exist in harmony. While we’re proud of our commitment to sustainable design practices it would be meaningless if we failed to address how our employees, suppliers and partners interact and engage with the communities we touch.

Currently we volunteer and sit on boards and advisory committees for a number of non-profit and/or community-oriented programs such as Habitat for Humanity, Girls for a Change, The South Phoenix Healthy Kids Partnership, Green Roundtable at the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce and YMCA to name a few. 

We also assist professional organizations and educational institutions like the Society of Marketing Professionals and various groups at Arizona State University with industry related information.
 

While we’re proud of our efforts in the community we also recognize the need to provide more specific metrics as it relates to the work we’re doing. Additionally we feel it’s important to understand these things about our suppliers and partners as well.

With that in mind our commitment in 2009 is to measure:

Total volunteer hours
Total contributions in $
Total in-kind contributions
Conduct audits on supplier/partner safety, health and general working conditions

At the end of 2009 we plan is to summarize our sustainable design approach – to discuss our successes and challenges in the development arena , ecometrics, if you will; combined with our sociometrics to provide a “scorecard” as to how we’re holding up to our commitments.

We all have a responsibility to the communities that support our businesses and lifestyles and want to ensure we hold ourselves accountable.