4 Ways Architects Renovated a Florida Air Force Base to Achieve LEED Silver

“Renovations are challenges in and of themselves, but factor in the additional requirements of health care and a government facility and you have quite a lot to take into consideration,” says Ashley Eusey, sustainability specialist at Hoefer Welker in Kansas City, Kansas.

Architectural firm Hoefer Welker and JE Dunn Construction achieved LEED Silver certification for updating and expanding Hurlburt Field Medical Clinic at Eglin Air Force Base in Mary Esther, Florida. The clinic provides medicine and support for 15,000 Air Commandos as well as health care for families and base personnel.

The design team wanted to create a healing environment at the clinic so they focused on indoor environmental quality (IEQ) strategies like outdoor air delivery, low emitting materials, lighting control, and thermal comfort. “With COVID 19, this weight on the indoor environment will become even more paramount going forward,” Eusey says. Indoor environmental quality improvements included optimized HVAC energy performance and low-emitting materials.

“Certain LEED strategies, like daylighting credits or even material reuse, were not available to us given the state of the existing building,” Eusey says. “Given that certain credits were not applicable, the team really had to dive in and invest in the ones we could achieve. The question became, given our limitations, how can we make the biggest impact to the occupants of the building and environment around it?”

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