Building Growth
Williams prides itself on superb facilities, and we recognize that the College must provide comfortable, functional and safe working, residential and recreational facilities to support our educational mission, yet we also recognize that minimizing new construction beyond those projects already planned would help Williams to achieve our emissions targets. As we plan for the future of this college we must consider the environmental impact of any future building growth. In the current environment, life-cycle energy use and associated emissions impacts are not part of the formal evaluation criteria and support for high-performance design is left to individual building committee members. Unfortunately, these considerations, while frequently included in the early stages of a project, are often left on the table as the project progresses toward final design due to seemingly conflicting priorities of program, budget and schedule.Our building policies need to incorporate sustainability as one of the evaluation criteria equal in importance to program, price and schedule throughout the planning and construction phases of these projects. We must fully evaluate and understand the impact of further expansion of our campus footprint and rigorously review our needs for future development. It is especially important that we establish specific sustainability standards in the early planning stages of individual projects and funding requests, and that we more rigorously include consideration of lifecycle costs of the building operations and the building components. Incorporating sustainability principles, including setting performance targets for energy use and emissions in our capital planning policies will enable the college to best manage the environmental impact of future growth and development.