Sustainability That Scales

Swinerton is driving a measurable and tangible impact on sustainability in the construction industry by fostering a culture of collaboration and empowerment. From our dedicated national sustainability experts to individual project team members, we are focused on building a culture of genuine collaboration with our clients, trade partners, and employees across the Swinerton Ecosystem to have a real impact on project and company sustainability. We are developing enterprise-wide programs and processes to reduce our company’s environmental impact by minimizing waste, protecting water resources, and enhancing sustainability on jobsites. Most importantly, we develop and customize solutions for our clients to minimize the environmental impacts of construction on their projects.

EMPOWERING TEAMS

Our approach empowers our building teams with the knowledge of how project sustainability affects every role and make these processes second nature to teams. Through collaborative workshops with entire project teams, Swinerton’s in-house Sustainability department has fostered greater capabilities in teams so that everyone from project executives to project engineers understand certification requirements and how to execute them. This understanding has created greater confidence among our builders as they move to new projects and face new requirements. It has also helped improve our trade partners’ performance.

Sustainability Manager Erin Kirkpatrick explains, “Sustainability requirements such as embodied carbon accounting are still new to a lot of builders and subcontractors. They can be pretty geographically-specific requirements that may not be happening in every region. It takes a lot of education for all of our trade partners and suppliers. It also takes a lot of outreach, but we feel it’s worthwhile to advance project sustainability and support our partners.”

For Swinerton, managing these processes is made easier because teams draw on national resources should questions arise. Local project teams can then support their area trade partners and suppliers in successfully meeting sustainability goals.

Kirkpatrick adds, “By creating processes and educating our teams and partners on these requirements, the more information spreads, and it becomes the norm. We can educate and pass that help on to our partners, and that’s how we move the needle to make the industry more sustainable.”

NAVIGATING COMPLEXITY

With ever-changing requirements for sustainable certifications, having a team with their fingers on the industry pulse ensures compliance, more innovation, and more creative solutions to meeting goals.

As a greater percentage of clients require sustainable processes and initiatives, project teams at Swinerton are drawing on the resources and capabilities of our enterprise Sustainability team to help navigate certifications such as LEED or ILFI Net Zero Carbon. Swinerton has recently expanded the Sustainability team to include a role dedicated to advancing project sustainability specifically—supporting our building teams with project requirements, and collaborating with owners, consultants, and trade partners to find innovative solutions and even exceed requirements.

For example, on the UCSF Peninsula Outpatient Center project in San Francisco—targeting LEED Gold—the project team sought out assistance in responding to comments to secure the points needed for certification. With the support of our Project Sustainability Manager, the team re-evaluated the credits being pursued and identified opportunities to pursue several credits not previously included in the certification plans, providing the project a more confident pathway to achieve LEED Gold.

SUSTAINABILITY FROM WITHIN

Swinerton continues to advance internal sustainability, building on a long history of green construction. In 2025, we completed an initial greenhouse gas accounting baseline of our direct and indirect emissions to better understand the impacts of jobsite operations and corporate emissions. We have initiated tracking relevant value chain impacts and will release our first full accounting for these impacts in 2027, including subcontractor and supply chain emissions. In addition, Swinerton remains a committed partner in preeminent organizations that meaningfully influence green construction and set industry frameworks, including the AGC’s Climate Change Working Group, the Sustainable Construction Leaders Group, and the Carbon Leadership Forum.

Our involvement and partnership with these organizations brings the latest industry research, benchmarks, and best practices for sustainable building to our teams on the ground.

As a thought leader in these groups, Swinerton partners with researchers and other industry partners to advance sustainable materials, practices, and processes that move the industry forward.

ADVANCING NET ZERO THROUGH DATA-DRIVEN CONSTRUCTION

Swinerton has partnered with National Accounts client T-Mobile to advance the telecommunication giant’s ambitious plan to reach Net-Zero Carbon by 2040. Through a retrospective forensic analysis of materials and processes on two projects built by Swinerton, we are working with T-Mobile to evaluate and understand the impacts of different construction processes and materials.

Erin Kirkpatrick describes how Swinerton evaluated the sourcing and quantities of all the materials used as part of the Kingsburg Call Center:

“We calculated the impacts and then analyzed how individual choices contributed to the project’s overall embodied carbon. For example, we saw that about 50% of the embodied carbon on the project went into finishes such as flooring. We then reviewed with the client the largest areas of impact by CSI Division and looked into specific product selections to better understand their performance.”

Armed with this information, Swinerton and T-Mobile will continue partnering to understand and make more impactful choices in future construction.