Conewago Enterprises, Inc. in Hanover, Pa., had done green building work for some clients in its Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia market when it decided it was time to follow its own advice with its headquarters.

"We had done a couple green projects for other clients and decided if we were going to advise people on a design-build basis on LEED, then we needed to go through the process ourselves,” Conewago President Donald B. Smith, Jr. told Construction Executive magazine. “The big driver was to go through the process with our money. We were determined to build LEED without blowing the budget.”

The company finished its 33,000-square-foot project in May 2010.

“We weren’t going to buy LEED points by doing things that wouldn’t actually save us energy and maintenance costs,” Smith is quoted as telling the magazine.

Conewago used its own ready-mix concrete operations, steel fabrication facility and precast concrete plant to do 60 percent of the project, the magazine reported.