The U.S. Green Building Council Tennessee held its annual IMPACT Conference on Oct. 11 in Nashville and presented Lee Company with a 2018 USGBC Tennessee Leadership Award for Innovative Design, New Construction for its Silver LEED status headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee.

Here are some of the building’s highlights:

• Potable indoor water use reduction: 27 percent.
• Potable exterior water use reduction: 100 percent as the project uses municipal supplied purple pipe water (recycled grey-water) for irrigation.
• Energy reduction via cost savings: 36.6 percent due to the use of LED lighting and VRF for the HVAC system.
• Construction waste diverted from landfill (by weight):  78.8 percent.
• Recycled content in materials (by cost): 20.1 percent.
• Regional materials (by cost): 27.9 percent regionally manufactured and raw materials regionally sourced.

The company also received other credits for the use of low-emitting materials for adhesives and sealants, paints and coatings, flooring products, composite wood products, plus a number of other innovation points, including 25 different permanently installed products that have Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) citing their cradle-to-gate life-cycle impact on the environment.