The Oregon Natural Step Construction Industry Group

The Oregon Natural Step Construction Industry Groupis a taskforce set up in 1999 to determine how to go beyond the “green building” concept. With The Natural Step Oregon’s help, the group created a vision of a fully sustainable commercial building and redefined the resource flows in the construction industry to achieve the vision.

This complements rather than competes with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). LEED is detailed focused and rewards design for being less “bad.” TNS uses a whole systems approach to align design and construction processes with nature’s cyclical processes to help balance the natural and built environments.

As members of the task force started applying these concepts, other architects and members of the construction community were offered workshops through the US Green Building Council. Early adopters such as Gerding Edlen Development Co and SERA Architects have even conducted these workshops in China. These firms understand that TNS Framework makes business sense, but to reap the rewards they have to train their staff and develop a coherent vision and strategy. Both companies are proud to “walk the talk” and have proven the long-term benefits of moving toward sustainability including the necessary ROI (return on investment), plus paybacks they hadn’t imagined.

A white paper about the process has influenced changes in the State of Oregon's Energy Tax Credits, and is being used by the Cascadia Chapter of the US Green Building Council to develop a new sustainability guideline called the Living Building Challenge. The paper, "Using the Natural Step as a Framework toward the Construction and Operation of Fully Sustainable Buildings" can be found on our website.

This summary was written Alexandra Lichtenberg, a 2008 graduate of the Master’s in Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainability Program in April of 2008.