Sustainable Projects Increase Firm Profits

“We did this study because I wanted to find out if we always lost money on these jobs, or if there are any trends we could find,” said Mary Ann Lazarus, AIA, director of sustainable design at HOK, which has 24 offices worldwide. Instead she discovered that the sustainable projects did better than the average for conventional projects completed during the same period. The study did not look into the reasons for this difference, but Lazarus speculates that integrated design helps the firm reduce costs while delivering a better product. Other possible factors include more motivated clients, a more focused design team, or a higher fraction of institutional projects with bigger budgets. The main lesson, according to Lazarus, is that many factors affect profitability for a design firm, and incorporating a sustainability focus doesn’t appear to have a negative effect—and it may even increase profits.