The Project started out last spring with a simple plan; rebuild a commercial building to a LEED Gold certified standard. Our plan was designed for functionality and as an educational tool for our employees. Our present corporate headquarters in Woodland Hills California was a shell when we built it out as our headquarters back in 2002. Our only goal at that time was to build a functional, efficient, good environment that we and our employees could call home during business hours.

We accomplished this goal, with a clean and friendly environment and also put in energy efficient appliances, lights with sensors that know when there is nobody in the office and automatically shut off. A hot water under counter system in the kitchen that heats only the kitchen, so the whole building doesn't need to heat up to wash the dishes. Skylights placed at the front and rear of the building for aesthetics.

At no time did we consciously think about Sustainability, being Green or any other environmentally friendly term that would make us appear to be socially responsible, we just wanted to do the best we could with what we had and save some money on expenses in the process.

Fast forward to April 2007, when we started the new project to remodel a second location in Woodland Hills, our commitment to Green was in its infancy. How the Green bug hit us was quite by accident. One day, while we were in negotiations to acquire the new location, one of our IT people mentioned that our building association wanted us to start a recycling campaign within our office. If we converted enough trash to recyclables the association would lower its trash service fees ultimately saving all the building owners in the park money.

While this was intriguing, there was one problem, the recycle bins they wanted us to use were cardboard. How could we place cardboard boxes in plain sight? How could we make sure people weren't just throwing their food in the boxes? How much extra would our cleanup crew charge us? This was the 45 minute discussion I, our CEO and Director of IT had, it not only was a pivotal point for me, but it set us on an incredible journey as a company that is still just beginning. Ultimately, we decided there were key areas in the office that could house the recycle bins, but of course we had to get nicer ones for our office.

At the same time of this pivotal discussion, one of the insurance carriers we represent, Fireman’s Fund, was in my office and we were discussing their new endorsement which will pay to rebuild a building Green and LEED certified after a covered loss. The light switch went on, the wagons were circled and immediately several members of the sales team at CMM and I had an impromptu meeting to discuss Green and how it can affect insurance.

During this discussion we made the commitment that the new building would be built Green and we would document the process at every step. We would need an architect, construction team and our bank to sign on. Before we knew it, we were on our way to rebuilding our newest CMM location LEED Gold certified.

How cool is this? The momentum and energy were unstoppable, the office was a buzz. Here we are a very diverse and unique insurance agency with growth plans while most agencies around us are downsizing or scaling back. We were charging forward full steam ahead.

The initial meeting in May with the architect was amazing. He reiterated our initial discussion on the phone, which was that no matter what anyone says the costs of building a LEED certified building are at least 25% higher than normal construction. We were different since we were buying the building with a partner as owner users; we were okay to just break even. We were not trying to hit a home run, just a single that would allow us to grow our core business.

The Architect viewed it as his canvas; we would build a raised floor, put the HVAC in a centralized area on the roof, send the air down the walls and come up under the floor. The building needed new HVAC units anyway.

The building was an old Research and Development building for the defense industry and there were very little windows. A key component of LEED is Day lighting or natural energy. So we planned on installing several Skylights throughout the building. Within weeks we had a fully functional schematic of how everything would work, of how we would get our LEED points and where, how and why we were doing some of things we were doing.

The CMMGreen team of sales professionals was starting to evolve with many of them involved in the educational process of LEED and creating the Green Risk guide which explains how Green can actually benefit your insurance program along with other bottom line benefits. We were learning at the speed of light. Our normally very conservative CEO, who was skeptical at first, saw firsthand how the raised floor was so cool and would ultimately save our energy costs by almost 35% per year, huge savings, looked great and he was sold. It made sense from a social responsibility standpoint, it seemed to make good fiscal sense and it looked cool too.

Parallel with the building, the CMMGreen team members were working diligently with insurance carriers to create incentives and coverage enhancements so Green businesses, homeowners, and automobile owners could benefit. It was like climbing uphill in the snow. Unfortunately, actuaries have to look at the past to see the future and Green did not have enough quantifiable past for the insurers.

Our contractor Current Trend Construction, who had done several Green projects, embraced our cause. He has worked with us and many of our clients on their needs so we knew he would be quite candid with us on our costs. He started his review, in working with the Architect we started to find out things that we did not experience on our 2002 build out.

For this project, we needed a Structural Engineer and a mechanical engineer, in addition we needed to pay for the LEED process and still pay for the LEED certification. By the time mid September rolled around we still had not begun construction or gone into permitting but had already spent quite a bit of money. Kerry at Current Trend came back with a traditional building (non LEED) cost analysis and a LEED building cost analysis. To build LEED would cost us 40% more, not the 25% we had expected.

We would save 35% in energy efficiency and be doing the right thing for the environment but did it make fiscal sense. We agreed that it would and continued our push to build a better building. A month later, the CMMGreen team really started to get into its groove. As a team we had bi weekly meetings in which we were learning about specific industries and their needs and how we as individuals and as a team can understand our new Green clients specific needs.

Unfortunately, as the Green team was really picking up steam, the management of CMM came to a sad realization that even though we needed additional space for growth, we could not make an investment that could take away focus and resources from our core business, insurance. So we pulled the plug on the building and moved forward, concentrating on insurance and how we could better educate our clients on "Green" and how it relates to insurance needs.

Once we stopped plans for the new location. CMM and the Green team started really concentrating on how we could assist Green businesses and as a business ourselves embrace a more Sustainable working environment. We decided to apply for an Energy Star rating at our existing location here in Wodland Hills. Just in the last month we found out that we did not get an energy star rating, so for now that is our goal. We will follow our progress and keep you informed and get that rating and do our part for ourselves, our bottom line and the environment. Hopefully you will follow our journey.

Thank you,

Jeff Kleid
President