NEW YORK — Thornton Tomasetti, Inc., has expanded its commitment to sustainability with the launch of a new sustainability department focused on providing clients with a broad range of sustainability services, as well as ensuring that the company’s internal offices and business operations are guided by sustainability principles.

“There’s been exponential growth in the green buildings sector, and this remarkable momentum, signified by the international success of the LEED rating systems, will not come to an end anytime soon,” said Wolfgang Werner, the new director of sustainability and leads the new sustainability department. “There is an expanding market for sustainability services, and we have valuable services to offer in this area. At the same time, we believe that we have a duty as good corporate citizens to do the right thing and contribute toward a more sustainable model of the built environment.”

Thornton Tomasetti’s multidisciplinary team of sustainability specialists advises on the wide variety of sustainability technologies and strategies and develops custom sustainability approaches for new and existing building projects. Services include LEED consulting and administration, energy modeling, renewable energy strategies, building performance audits and upgrades, and life cycle assessment studies.

The origins of the Thornton Tomasetti sustainability department date to early 2007, when the firm’s leadership recognized the broad market transformation in the building industry toward more sustainable design and construction practices and charged its handful of LEED Accredited Professionals at the time to form a task force to develop a sustainability agenda for the firm. Today Thornton Tomasetti has 183 LEED APs, which is approximately 10% of the world’s LEED accredited structural engineers.

The task force, led by Werner and founding member Paulina Calderon, developed a set of sustainability services, led the drive to increase the firm’s LEED APs, educated both clients and staff about green building issues and helped implement more sustainable office operations firm-wide, including the LEED Commercial Interiors Gold certification for Thornton Tomasetti’s Chicago office.

The new sustainability department will continue moving these efforts forward with elevated momentum. Because green building goals permeate every aspect of the built environment, the sustainability department will be multidisciplinary and work in tandem with Thornton Tomasetti’s other practices to deliver more sustainable new and existing buildings.