April/May 2008

LEED Rating System

LEED Therapy

It's a Family Affair
by Ben Stanley, YRG Consultants

Your green building project team is like a great big extended family, and LEED is the Thanksgiving table.
It brings everyone together, gives them all lots of different options to try, and generally makes us all feel
warm and fuzzy and eventually – full.  Unfortunately, when we’re done eating it can also put us to sleep.
So what’s the key to keeping everyone awake and speaking coherently? Like any family: lots of love and
attention

Prerequisites: The Middle Children of LEED

People may tell you, and they’re generally right, that most of the prerequisites are “standard practice” for the building industry. 
But just like some of our middle children siblings, prerequisites can be overlooked, as project teams can be tempted to breeze over
the prerequisites and move on to some of the more time consuming topics like building energy systems (elder child) and bike racks
(the baby of the family; it gets all the attention).  Resist this urge and make sure to give the prerequisites their due time to avoid an
unpleasant discovery down the road when you’ve included “LEED certified” in your marketing materials.

Some Examples:

• We’ve encountered projects with no Erosion Control Plan for construction at 100% CD’s, inadequate plans to meet the
  Construction General Permit, and a lack of erosion control maintenance during construction.

• Watch out for the mandatory provisions of ASHRAE 90.1-2004 and especially prescriptive compliance paths to meet the
  two point minimum for EAc1 Optimize Energy Performance.  In fact, meeting the 2 point minimum practically dictates
  energy modeling and a non-standard approach to building shell, lighting, and HVAC systems.

• If pressed, could you define the term, commissioning? If not, then this perquisite is likely NOT something you were about
  to do anyway, and it will likely cost anywhere from $0.50 to $1.50 per square foot or more (in CO) than your “baseline”
  design. The bright side, of course, is that commissioning is one of the highest value-added activities required for LEED
  certification, boasting a quick payback and avoidance of unwanted and costly call backs. 

• Along with EAc1: Optimize Energy Performance, EQp1: Minimum IAQ Performance was voted most rejected by the USGBC
  reviewers in the initial review so keep a close eye on your naturally ventilated spaces (that means you, multi-family unit)
  and make sure that your calculations for mechanically ventilated spaces follow the Ventilation Rate Procedure. 

Don’t  you… forget about LEED

Your project may hold a LEED Charrette or Kick-off meeting and establish a road map with tangible strategies to meet the project’s LEED
goals but the work is not over yet.  Early design features which contribute to LEED goals are frequently cut out of projects giving way to
other design constraints.  Examples:

• Parking Structures or Underground Parking – gone
• Bioswales – lost to surface parking
• Window Sizes – magically shrink as if placed in the oven.
• Asphalt areas – creep larger
• Dual Flush Toilets – down the drain
• Exterior Lighting – but people need to SEE it!

It's not always obvious how indvidual design aspects fit into the overall LEED strategy, but they may be more important than we think
at first glance. Consider that parking structures alone contribute to such credits as SSc7.1 Heat Island Non Roof, EAc1 Optimize Energy
Performance, SSc5.2 Maximize Open Space, MRc5 Regional Materials, and MRc4 Recycled Content.

Innovation: Not earning all five credits is like not eating dessert

All projects should target all 5 points for Innovation in Design, which can likely be achieved with a low added cost.  Here’s a list of innovation
points that can be achieved by any project anywhere:

1. Green Education
2. Green Cleaning
3. Dual Flush Toilets + Waterless Urinals + Kitchen Sink 1.0 gpm + Lavatories 0.5 gpm = 40% water reduction.
4. Green Power 70%
5. LEED Accredited Professional: I am personally always willing to take on more work.

Every Mob Needs a Boss

Architects, contractors, and other team members can promote LEED certification for a project and LEED consultants
and green champions obviously add untold value as well. But ultimately, the most successful LEED projects happen
when the owner or developer is actually invested (you can tell because they stop calling it LEEDS). After all, where
would the Corleone’s be without Vito Andolini?  Project team coordination and cooperation is a must for LEED
certification and the best way to facilitate that is for the entity cutting the checks at the end of the day to present
LEED and sustainability goals as a major priority for the project. 

"I'm gonna make him a CIR he can't refuse"

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CBG / Apr.May 2008 / Page 4