“the guidance would ensure Sustainable Design and
Development be considered in Army installation plan-
ning decisions and infrastructure projects to the full-
est extent possible, balanced with funding constraints
and customer requirements.” More importantly, he
defined sustainability as addressing the full facilities
life cycle, “integrating sustainable design and devel-
opment into installation planning and throughout the
project planning, programming, design, construction,
operation and maintenance process.”
First Sustainable Design Policy for Army Facilities
For the U.S. Army and USACE, sustainable design
concepts were first published in Engineering Technical
Letter (ETL) 1110-3-491. ETL 1110-3-491 provided ba-
sic criteria and information incorporating sustainable
design concepts in the planning, design and construc-
tion of all new Army facilities and the rehabilitation/
renovation of existing facilities. It pre-dated the U.S.
Green Building Council’s (USGBC‘s) first green build-
ing rating tool, LEED v 1.0. ETL 1110-3-491 applied
to all HQ USACE elements and USACE commands
having Army military construction (MILCON) and
design responsibility. The ETL defined sustainable
design as the “design, construction, operation, and re-
use/removal of the built environment (infrastructure
and buildings) in an environmentally and energy effi-
cient manner.” It went on to define sustainable design
as using the foundations of sustainability that we still
consider primary today:
...incorporating energy efficiency concerns of the
1970s with the concerns in the 1990s related to damage
to the natural environment; emissions of greenhouse