Built Green Colorado, run by the Home Builders Association of Metro Denver, is a voluntary, statewide green building program that has been operational since 1995. With more than 110 builders enrolled and more than 20,000 homes registered, it is the largest green building program in the country, according to Built Green. HousingZone.com talks with Kim Calomino about the mission and operation of the program and how it can help home builders deliver more energy-efficient, durable homes while differentiating their products in the marketplace.

HousingZone: Can you give us a timeline of how Built Green has evolved and tell us how the program has changed since it began in 1995?

Calomino: It has changed enormously. When we began it was a relatively new concept and Austin [Texas] was the only city with such a program. We began with a very simple and flexible approach using a checklist that had a range of options that were all equally weighted. The approach was: the more opportunity and the greater flexibility we created in the program, the more participation we would see. So we began with a pretty simple and straightforward approach -- make selections from anywhere in this checklist meeting the minimum number, and we'll support you and call you a Built Green builder and help you promote and educate what that means.

As time went by, we had a good degree of success, in large part due to the great support and funding from the Governor's Office of Energy Management and Conservation. We realized that builders in the [Denver] metro area -- we began as a seven-county metro area program and later evolved into a statewide program -- were embracing it, understanding it fairly readily and employing it in their buildings and conversations with consumers. As any program should, ours involves the process of annual reviews, updates and very vigorous dialogue about the advancement of green building and the kind of techniques and technologies that we should support. Through that process of annual review, a number of things happened. One, we looked at our checklist and after a several years we thought we really needed to weight the checklist, to give greater merit and draw builders toward making certain kinds of selections from the checklist because they are more valuable.

We developed a matrix around which we evaluated each option. We continue to evaluate each option in our review process each year and decide point values. That's a structure change, but it's also a philosophical change. It says: now that we have the industry's attention and believe that they acknowledge that this movement is valid and real and helpful to them, we want to provide them with better guidance and better tools. The checklist continues to evolve, but that initial move to a weighted system was really toward a point on the horizon that we have come much closer to, and that was really wanting to integrate building science and the systems approach to building as part of green building.

We believe it's very difficult to arrive at a green home -- a home that's more resource and energy efficient, durable, healthier to live in, requires less maintenance, saves the consumer money, is more comfortable -- without employing building science, without looking at the home as a system.

Then the program evolved a bit further from there in trying to link points. So if you do one item, you get three points, and if you do this other item, you get three points, but if you do both of them together you get six points, plus something. It tries to pull builders toward thinking about choices in conjunction with each other, doing the systems approach.

That evolution took a big stride again this year in January when we introduced two new levels to the program. We've always been a single-tiered program -- you either qualified or you didn't, and it was up to you, the builder, to distinguish yourself from the other Built Green builders. We continue to have the same level that we've always operated on, with the weighted points, but we have two new levels that entirely use the systems approach.

It's no longer a matter of selecting from a menu, it's a set of got-to-dos. Here's the whole package -- you have to do all of these things. The testing requirement and the commissioning requirement goes up significantly. Beyond that core got-to-do list, they have to make some additional checklist choices that are more around the green issues as opposed to simply building performance, energy performance and so on. It ramps up fairly significantly at level two and again at level three. It's brand-new -- we just introduced it this year -- and we certainly have a lot of work to do.

Peter Yost and the Building Science Corporation developed a new curriculum that addresses specifically that second level, because we don't think anybody is going to jump right up to level three. We are laying low on the marketing side because we don't think there's a lot of point in trying to deliver a lot of promotion and education to the consumer, until we have the builders understanding how they need to build and communicate those two new levels to their buyers. But also what we've understood is that we have to deliver to the consuming market a better message about how they directly benefit in making a Built Green choice as opposed to just dwelling on the environmental benefits. So once there's a certain level of understanding and acceptance in the market, then we'll be able to start saying that there are some high-performance builders participating in these new levels we've made. But we think that this would be a wasted dialogue at this point.

Back to your question about how this program has changed, it has evolved in this direction of building science, high-performance housing, the systems approach. To support all of that, our educational tools have evolved, our dialogue with the consumer and with the builder has evolved. Somewhere in there I mentioned that we went from a metro-wide program to a statewide program.

HZ: How many builders are enrolled in the program?

Calomino: There are currently 113 builders enrolled.

HZ: How many homes have been certified?

Calomino: We don't use the word certified; we use the word registered. Through the end of the first quarter for 2004 -- and this would be a cumulative since the beginning of the program in 1995 -- 20,275 homes have been registered.

HZ: Do you know how that ranks with other green building programs in the nation?

Calomino: We believe that we are the largest, most successful green program based on that number. We don't think any other program has registered anywhere near that number of homes.

HZ: What are the benefits to builders who participate in the Built Green program, and how do you explain that to them?

Calomino: One of the benefits is that we believe that using the kinds of techniques, technologies and practices -- and certainly if they're employing the systems approach -- that they're going to build a better home. We can provide them with the technical support to help them do that. We work with a variety of energy raters in Colorado who are very engaged in our program and understand the building practices and the building science and who provide a great deal of technical support that helps the builder build a better home. A home that is going to have fewer callbacks, a home that is going to have a happier consumer, a home that's going to save them on warranty costs, and a home that, because it does all of those things, gives them the opportunity to position their product better with the consumer.

Part of the responsibility for promoting the benefits of Built Green rests with the builder. If they are properly educating their sales staff about the Built Green choices they have made and how to communicate that benefit to the buyer, it is going to help sell homes. We work with builders to help them educate their sales staff. We do provide some marketing materials. We have a really great Web site. We provide them brochures to put in their sales offices. We also do direct marketing. We have a television campaign funded by program members that allows us to purchase TV advertising.

We probably have a bigger budget than some other programs, but it's still a shoestring budget in terms of trying to create brand identity. So we leverage everything that we possibly can to help drive consumer education, consumer demand and an educated buyer to the sales offices of those builders participating in the program. Because we're a statewide program, even though we're a local HBA, we work really closely with all of the other HBAs in the state so we can help provide benefit to the members in each local market.

One of the prime interfaces any home builders association has with the public is through their parade of homes, or tour of homes. A lot of them have home and garden shows. We participate in all of those events. A parade of homes, for example, probably looks different everywhere. In Denver, every parade of homes since 1997 has been all Built Green homes. So we educate heavily to those 100,000-plus visitors that come to the parade. We have information placards in each home. We have signage in prime gathering areas onsite that provide quick snippets of information. We provide brochures that they can take away. We do a special Built Green section in the parade magazine.

All of those ways of getting out there to the public provide benefit. The other piece of it is the builders' responsibility to leverage their own investment. You've made a choice to participate, you've made some choices about how to build your home, and if you're not talking about it, you're not leveraging the good work that you're doing. So they really have to talk about it and embed it in their own marketing. All of those combine to the ultimate benefit of convincing the home buyer to buy their home instead of someone else's.

HZ: What's the process for getting a home registered?

Calomino: First, you have to join the program independently. It is a program of the HBA, but you have to join Built Green. We have annual builder dues of $150, and the home registration fee is $35 per home. So they have to register the home to use the name Built Green for that home. They have to complete a checklist -- that is their guidance document -- that tells them if the home is going to comply. For a new builder, that's a process of thinking through how they want to comply. For an existing builder, they're usually always reviewing their building practices and products. They probably review and update their checklist choices on an annual basis. So they have to be an enrolled member, they have to register the home and the home has to comply. The registration process also allows us to keep a database of addresses, by builder, that then gives us the opportunity to identify and isolate the homes that we want to randomly verify for compliance. So if we ever use the word certify, it's on those homes that have actually been third-party inspected for compliance.

HZ: What percentage of homes gets the third-party inspection?

Calomino: We do 5%.

HZ: So if a builder just signed up for the program and built his first Built Green home, would you test that home, or wait until he does a few more?

Calomino: We would typically get in there and test one of their very first houses, because that's really good technical support for them. It's also going to let us know if we have a builder who needs more or less technical support. Another thing we really encourage builders to do is to work with an energy rater. An energy rater is a misnomer. They are certified energy raters, but they're also certified to provide training about how to check for compliance for all of those things that aren't energy related on the Built Green checklist. It's their responsibility to gather documentation, to do the testing, to submit the energy rating to E-Star Colorado, and then to issue the report and the certification that comes with that. Those people are great knowledge bases for builders to work with.

We also encourage the builder to think about doing an initial "from plans" rating. Why not check the home before you build it? We try to do a lot of up-front work so there aren't a lot of mistakes and we find that that works pretty well.

HZ: Is there any required training for a builder to participate in the Built Green program?

Calomino: There's kind of a yes and no answer to that. Right now, there is no requirement that they take training. With the introduction of the two new tiers, builders will be required to take the curriculum that I spoke about. There's no way a builder could understand all of the challenges in moving down the building science path, unless they're already engaged with a building science consultant. It's actually on the table as a matter of policy discussion with our guiding committee whether or not we should make our regular training -- Built Green University -- a requirement for anybody new to the program.

HZ: What kind of feedback have you heard from builders who participate in the program?

Calomino: There are so many different ways that someone enters the program and so many different levels at which they embrace it, that there is a whole range of responses. It depends on how vigorous the builder has been in their own efforts to promote, how adequately they've equipped and supported their different teams within their own organizational structure to make the shift, and it depends on if the decision was top-down, or was there a champion who pushed it up.

By and large, we have a very strong core of builders who have been members for quite a long time. The ranks continue to grow with new members, but there is an attrition rate as well. There are some builders who will drop off for a variety of reasons. So you may hear some builders saying, "This is great; This is really working for us," to other builders who might have come into the program not quite anticipating the level to which they needed to commit. It's not just a marketing handle. You can't just say that you'll just spend $150 and $35 a house and start calling yourself a Built Green builder. That will never work, not if you're a Built Green builder or with any other marketing effort you undertake. You have to work at it from your end as a builder. The builder's payoff is not going to depend just on us and how effective we are, and not just how effective their choices have been, but how effective they are in communicating that. I know from our own market research that the builder's sales office is the single most effective point of communication and opportunity to educate the consumer about what Built Green is and what that builder is doing. So if they're leveraging their own power, they're going to have great success.

HZ: Have there been any recent Built Green homes that have stood out to you, that have gone above and beyond a normal Built Green home?

Calomino: There are probably lots of them, and I certainly don't know about every great thing every builder is doing. McStain Neighborhoods has done a wonderful Discovery Home. This is part of how they educate themselves about how they want to continue evolving their product. Every few years they will build a home that's specifically meant to try and test new things and get feedback from the subs, suppliers, their own superintendents, the market, on everything from how it fit into their production process, what the application was like, how it looks, sounds, feels and smells. So they've got this great Discovery House where they've employed all kinds of things that everybody wants to learn about. That's one of the great things about McStain: they provide all of that information very collegially back to the industry and our program. They've been engaged in helping us refine and expand and improve the program from the very beginning, and the Discovery House is one of the ways they do that. So there is a fine and wonderful example of how, not only is it a great Built Green home, but it's a great scientific study and undertaking. They will continue to gather data about how it's performing once the house is sold and people live in it. So it's an ongoing research project that the entire industry can benefit from.

A number of builders also stand out in my mind. Engle Homes has moved from how they build homes to a completely building science, systems approach. They've done an outstanding job. We watch how they market and talk and actively engage the home buyer. So we learn from them like we learn from McStain, and the whole industry benefits. They're a good sized builder, demonstrating that a production builder can do these things.

A much smaller builder in the affordable market is Aspen Homes. They have embraced green building and performance building with great vigor and demonstrated that an affordable builder can do this. You don't have to be building million-dollar houses to build green, highly efficient, high-performance homes.

Another builder is US Home. They were the first production builder to join the program. It really took that movement by them to bring us into the mainstream. They're like any other builder and, like the program, they evolve, they learn more and they get better at what they do, both in how they build the home and how they talk about and sell the homes. They've changed a number of things just in this year in their product that shows they continue to track and improve their product because they recognize how it's benefiting them in the market. No builder is going to make a decision to do something just because Built Green thinks it's a great idea. They have to know that the market is going to respond to it, that it's going to help them sell homes, that it's going to save them something, whether it's in warranties or callbacks.

The fact that I can watch somebody as small as Aspen Homes, midsize Engle Homes and big-size US Home all moving in the same direction to one degree or another means that the building culture in Colorado has shifted, it has embraced this, and it's going to continue to evolve in that direction.

HZ: Do you see any trends in green building, in relation to products or building techniques?

Calomino: I do, and I think it all goes back to building science. Builders are far more in tune with how they look at heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and how all of those things are not just energy things; they're building performance things. It has to do with health and safety, building durability, moisture control and the long-term performance of that building. So they understand that you don't make these choices in isolation, and you don't just say, "We'll put the furnace here and let the HVAC guys figure out where to run the ducts." You think about all of those things and you embed that in how you draw your plans and you get all of your teams working together. So your HVAC guy and your insulation guy and your framing guys all understand that their work collaboratively has an impact on how the building is going to perform, and ultimately how happy that home buyer is going to be. And, as a result, how happy the builder is going to be. That's a trend that gets back to how green building and building science are absolutely tracking side-by-side.

HZ: Anything else to add?

Calomino: I think I said early on that Built Green is the largest and most successful green building program in the country, and we think it's because of our focus on benefits to the buyer. And if builders will focus on benefits to the buyer, they'll succeed.