The Southeast’s Top Green Builders

More Firms are Going Green, Winning Green

In our continuing effort to provide insight and analysis about the regional construction and design industries, Southeast Construction presents its newest ranking, for Top Green Builders.

This inaugural list was generated via the use of an online survey of respondents to the most recent Top Contractors ranking, published in April. For this inaugural ranking, approximately 50 firms reported a cumulative green revenue total of more than $3.5 billion.

While the construction industry may be sagging for now, there’s no indication that the trend toward green building is going away anytime soon.

About the Ranking

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This Top Green Builders ranking is based on any 2008 revenue from green-certified projects in the Southeast Construction region of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. For the purposes of the survey, “green” projects were defined as those that have been registered with third-party green building or other sustainable construction ratings organizations. This includes projects that are officially registered with a third-party rating group but may have not been certified yet.

Also, even if the registered project may never achieve certification, the registration was considered sufficient to show intent to design toward a recognized set of green standards. The revenue numbers reported here include only the company revenue generated in 2008 from these green projects.

Laying the claim to the Southeast’s Top Green Builder this first time out is Brasfield & Gorrie of Kennesaw, Ga. That’s a familiar spot for the firm, which recently landed at the top of the magazine’s Top Contractors ranking for the third consecutive year.

(Photo courtesy Brasfield & Gorrie)

The contractor reported approximately $354.4 million in green revenue during 2008, which equated to roughly one quarter of the company’s Southeast revenue for the year.

Balfour Beatty Construction of Plantation, Fla., finished in a close second, with about $320.1 million in green revenue for the year. Skanska USA of Atlanta finished third with $258.7 million, and Clark Construction Group of Tampa ranked fourth with nearly $197.6 million in green revenue. Turner Construction Co. of Atlanta rounded out the top five, with approximately $192 million.

While that top five is made up of some of the Southeast’s—and nation’s—largest contractors, a reading of the complete ranking reveals that the green construction market is an equal opportunity employer.

Cox & Schepp of Charlotte, N.C., for example, ranks 12th in this Top Green Builders ranking, with $110 million in green revenue during 2008—despite ranking 47th in the broader Top Contractors ranking. That’s because it had more than half of its revenue come from green projects, enabling it to leapfrog over numerous firms that are much larger overall.

Read on for the complete list. And good luck going green!