week 45_Platinum Success

Although we have already completed the LEED certification project for TAIPEI 101 Tower, this week it was officially made public - announced to the press, and the world. For all parties involved it was a particularly proud moment, as we revel in the magnificence of this monumental achievement for such a large/tall building. Many new construction projects have made the news for their LEED certifications... but to take an existing building and find ways to make it even more efficient can result in significantly reduced environmental impacts - and we're hoping that the building industry takes notice. TAIPEI 101 was able to achieve the highest certification available under the LEED rating system. This made for one very very happy LEED consultant! (me, obviously)

Posing with a green display at the press conference

Anyways, this blog is not about preaching for everyone to become tree-huggers... so I'll limit it to the highlights of my busy week! Because this achievement is so significant, my week was FULL with of related events - happy hour, press conference, cocktail party, celebration dinner, another appreciation dinner coming up next week. All I can say is, thank goodness my family recently bought me many new dresses to celebrate my birthday! I wore them all, all week long!

The happy hour event was organized to put the LEED APs in Taiwan in touch with a LEED AP group in Hong Kong. It was really great to meet someone from the Hong Kong group and to chit-chat about the challenges of international LEED projects. It's amazing how small the world becomes when you start finding the commonalities you share with people of other countries. At least in this line of work, it was easy for us to carry on about the challenges of sustainability consulting in Asia. The camaraderie was great and the venue - the W Hotel - was pretty sweet too (as you already know from my previous blog posts...). 

Accepting the plaque:
(from left) Harace Lin -President of TAIPEI 101,
Premier Wu of Taiwan, and Mark MacCracken
of the United States Green Building Council

My favorite part about the press conference was either the fabulous announcer - he seemed very much like a television game show host - who spoke perfect English & Chinese. He really made the show. I also especially enjoyed seeing the Premier Wu's assistant. He played one of those roles that you know must exist, but it was neat to see it in real life - walking behind Premier Wu and whispering in his ear as he approached each person (this is Mr. D...P... and he is senior partner at S....L... and so on!). The information this man had memorized was amazing as they crossed the room greeting the key players in attendance. [Not being from Taiwan, or completely familiar with their political system - it has been explained to me that the Premier is something similar to the 2nd in command of the country... the Vice President for all intensive purposes].

My team and I.

To top it all off, the TAIPEI 101 Tower has been lit up all week with the words "LEED" and "Green On" on different sides of the tower - which we discovered as we were leaving the happy hour at the W Hotel. Ha! You can just imagine our pleasant surprise when we saw it. We stood there and took many pictures with the building in the background as many people stared at us wondering what sort of a tour group we were with. And now, I see it on my way home from work each day. This is not the only project I've been working on for the past 10 months, but it is the most impressive one.

Yes! So proud. :)