Commonsense here: Remember, roadmaps don’t work really well until you have a solid goal or destination in mind. None of this matters unless it feels right to you, regardless of my advice. You know your company’s boundaries. You know what your comfort levels are. Proceed at your organizational pace.
How LEED Can Lead to a Better Building
Part 1: LEED v3: How it has Changed
Part 2: LEED Sustainable Sites Strategies
Part 3: LEED Water Efficiency Strategies
Part 4: LEED Energy and Atmosphere Strategies
Part 5: LEED Materials and Resources Strategies
Part 6: LEED Indoor Environmental Quality Strategies
Part 7: LEED Innovation Strategies
LEED v3: How it has Changed
By Randhir Sahni
September 2009Sustainability is finally coming full circle. Many of the strategies being used to design and operate green buildings these days have actually been used for a long time, but are just now coming back into vogue.
Think back to a time when energy was expensive and not readily available. Transportation was costly. It was more cost-effective to use local or regional materials. Sites retained rainwater for consumption; sewage and silage were treated on site. Buildings had natural ventilation and provided a substantial number of air changes resulting in high indoor air quality.
As energy became abundant, readily available and inexpensive, the need to be sustainable diminished, and the old norm lost its importance. Economics changed, as developers took the stage and played a very important role in planning buildings to accommodate post-World War II population growth. Federal, state and local governments formulated policies that accommodated market forces and development economics rather than sustainability.
Now, the renewed emphasis on sustainability has reached a universal level, and more and more people understand how buildings affect the environment.
The U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating system has provided a framework to guide facility executives through sustainable projects. LEED has helped promote awareness for green design, operations and maintenance strategies. Few would dispute that LEED has improved the general attitude toward green building and how buildings affect the natural world.
Especially in these difficult economic times, where facility and design budgets are being squeezed, formal LEED certification may be an expense that is tough to justify. But that doesn’t mean facility executives should totally disregard LEED. The important thing to remember on any type of facility-related project is the consequences to the environment — and these can certainly be accounted for in LEED, even if plans for a formal certification are several years down the road. Each section of LEED provides a guide targeted at a particular area of sustainability. Understanding each category is important to understanding how LEED can be used as a guide to holistic green.
What You Need To Know About LEED v3
With the release of LEED v3 this April, the U.S. Green Building Council completed a sizable overhaul to its entire roster of LEED rating systems. Much has changed in the new LEED, from individual credit requirements to how much each credit is worth. Here is a list of some of the major changes facility executives should be aware of.
- LEED v3 actually refers to three different LEED initiatives: LEED 2009, LEED Online and a new certification model.
- LEED 2009 updates nine separate rating systems: LEED for New Construction, LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance, LEED for Core and Shell, LEED for Commercial Interiors, LEED for Schools, LEED for Homes, LEED for Retail, LEED for Healthcare, and LEED for Neighborhood Development.
- The LEED Online tool has been updated to make it easier for facility executives to go to the site, enter project details and be told which LEED rating system best fits their project. It also helps facility executives manage the entire process from registration to certification. Check it out at leedonline.usgbc.org.
- USGBC has delegated the project certification process to an organization called the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI). This organization, which also manages the LEED Accredited Professional (AP) credential, has hired several third-party organizations to certify projects based on an ISO certification model. The goal of this new model is to speed up the process, make it more consistent and reduce the backlog of projects currently awaiting certification.
- GBCI has instituted several changes to the LEED AP program, including a credentialing maintenance system and two new designations: LEED Green Associate and LEED Fellow. For more information, visit www.gbci.org.
- Candidates for the LEED AP test have a choice whether to become credentialed in Operations & Maintenance, Building Design & Construction, or Interior Design & Construction. Each designation has its own exam.
- Credits for all rating systems have been re-weighted so that each rating system is now on a 100-point scale (with six more points available for Innovation and four for the newly added regional priority credits). For all rating systems, Certified is 40-49 points, Silver is 50-59, Gold is 60-79, and Platinum is 80 or more.
- Energy efficiency and strategies that reduce carbon dioxide emissions, such as using alternative energy, metering, and commissioning, have been weighted more heavily in the LEED 2009 rating systems. For example, in the new version of LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance, facility executives can get up to six points for using renewable energy, whereas in the previous version, the maximum was four points.
- Another major change in terms of credit requirements in LEED for New Construction is that a 20 percent reduction of in-building water use is now a prerequisite, as opposed to an optional credit.
- USGBC now asks that project teams commit to sharing energy and water data on their buildings for a minimum of five years via a free online tool. The goal for this requirement is to create a built-in study for green building data to compare with traditional building water and energy use.
— Greg Zimmerman, executive editor
Comments
Nice overview by By Randhir Sahni from a facilities executive perspective.
Thanks for the tweeted link to this from @brian_phelps (“LEED v3: How it has Changed, Building Operating Management, http://bit.ly/rcDWn“)
This post was originally written for and appeared on the be2camp website
Last weekend I bought and read a copy of Charles Leadbeater’s We Think. “the web is a platform for mass creativity and innovation”.
An analogy that Charles uses in his prologue struck me as a good one as to what is emerging within the built environment sector, and chimes well with my call for a be2camp manifesto at be2camp brum last week.
Imagine a large sandy beach with a small number of big, very big boulders. Around each boulder are gathered crowds of people.
The scene changes, and slowly hundreds and thousands of people come to the beach and drop small pebbles on the beach, anywhere and everywhere, and increasingly no where near the big boulders.
Slowly the pebbles, some of them as small as grains of sand start to dominate the beach-scape. A few new big boulders appear but these seem somehow more attractive, more colourful than the original ones. And on close inspection these are not the mono-culture type as before, but a collection of smaller, independent pebbles.
The landscape has changed dramatically. The big boulders having no influence crumble, as the crowds of people are scattered across the beach.
Leadbeater uses the scenario to illustrate what is happening within business under the influence of social media and network developments. A move away from big corporate control, to the smaller emergent ‘long tail’
In the built environment I see this analogy as a potential shift of influence from the institutes, quangos, national strategy working groups, corporate websites, (the established boulders) to the emerging ‘conversations’ through twitter, facebook, blogs, networks … (the peebles).
The new boulders, the collection of groups, are the flickrs and slideshares and linkedins. We can also see the be2camps, AECnetwork and Archnetworks, as the new colourful, more attractive boulders with a very different culture.
Problems and innovations are increasingly addressed by the crowds themselves, through connections and connections across the pebbles.
The pebbles are independent in another important aspect, they are no longer tethered to the original big boulders of IT departments, software and internet providers.
The influence in the built environment is shifting.
Which is where I come back to a be2camp sustainability manifesto, (which incidently should really be a resilience manifesto.)
The influence of where the built environment goes in respect of sustainability/resilience should come from, be influenced by, be commented upon and monitored by the people with pebbles. That’s the twitters, the bloggers, the be2campers, ie those who learn, share, inspire through social media, and are slowly becoming the conscience or compass for the sector.
The original starting point for a manifesto, part of the introduction to be2camp London follows, but I have added the issue of resilience that emerged at be2camp brum.
A be2camp manifesto
Address sustainability as an issue of resilience – resilience to changing environmental, social, economic and technical issues.
Make sustainability in the built environment open source. Sustainability is too important an issue and cannot be done behind closed doors
Adopt and use the opportunities that web2.0 offers
Influence, comment, monitor built environment approaches and strategies
Embrace open communication through pedia and dialogue through discussion forums, blogs and twitter to allow for consultation and collaboration
Engage with all in the built environment sector. Unless there is open and representative approaches to sustainability, it will be largely lost, misunderstood or perceived as irrelevant to those at the sharp end of our industry.
Encourage the debate, the transition, the movement to help shape a resilient built environment that embraces web2.0
These points will be put up onto a wiki very shortly for collaborative development. I do hope you engage and shape an open and collaborative approach to sustainability and resilience.
A discussion session will also be held at the be2camp working buildings event in London Oct 7 and 8
There is also the opportunity to comment and add your thoughts here and through twitter using the #b2camp hashtag.
This blog has been neglected of late, something I will remedy very soon (most likely at the end of school holidays!)
However comments, views and links to all manner of things can be found on the following:
Follow me on twitter at @fairsnape
Follow my new Posterous blog / scrapbook at http://martinbrown.posterous.com/
Follow and Get involved with be2camp developments at http://be2camp.ning.com/ in particular our upcoming event in London at the Working Buildings event on 7th and 8th October
Follow local community happenings at our new blog at WICE
Follow and Get involved with Straw Bale discussions on the very new Bowley Straw Bale site
A welcomed and important perspective on the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan was posted by Rob Hopkins on the Transition blog:
After many months of Ed Milliband putting himself out there are a Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change that actually gets climate change, finally his big Plan, the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan was unveiled on Wednesday, in a speech in the House of Commons that name checked Transition Towns and which is the boldest national vision for a low carbon society yet seen. Many others have since pitched in with their thoughts, I thought it might be useful here to offer an analysis from a Transition perspective. In his speech, Milliband said “we know from the Transition Towns movement the power of community action to motivate people..”, clearly an outcome of his attendance as a ‘Keynote Listener’ at the Transition Network conference in May. So how does the Plan measure up, and does it actually advance what Transition initiatives and the wider relocalisation movement are doing?
On Housing (of particular interest here) Rob Comments:
The Plan restates 2016 of the date by which all new housing will be zero carbon, which is entirely laudable, although Wales has actually managed to introduce this 5 years earlier, by 2011. It might have provided a good push to this had it been brought forward to, say, 2014. Much of this part of the report is as you would imagine, but it does contain the intriguing statement that “the Government is investing up to £6 million to construct 60 more low carbon affordable homes built with innovative, highly insulating, renewable materials”.
Does this mean that there is now £6 million for hands-on research into straw bale, hemp construction, earth plasters and so on?
Or does ‘highly insulating, renewable materials’ refer to Kingspan and other industrial oil-derived building materials?
At the moment ‘zero carbon homes’ refers only to a building’s performance once built, not the embodied energy of the materials it contains.
The role of local and natural materials in strengthening local economies is key.
My Comment: it is these points that need a wider, open and urgent debate as raised in a previous blog item here. If zero carbon is the solution what was the question? and are we defining zero carbon with enough insight?
Rob scores the Plan as follows:
Addressing Peak Oil: 1 out of 10.
Energy: 7 out of 10.
Transport 4 out of 10
Housing: 6 out of 10
Community involvement: 2 out of 10
Food and Farming: 1 out of 10
and Overall : 6 out of 10
If zero carbon is the answer then just what was the question
Is it ‘just because’ I am currently seeing things from a different perspective as I re-read Cradle to Cradle, (which I feel has more resonance with where we are now) but a number of recent issues and events have left me questioning our approach to zero, and that going to zero is not enough. Indeed it may even be dangerous ‘just’ going to zero.
Lets consider the built environment in its widest sense, not just from design to FM but from wining raw materials through construction to end users, and consider the opening premise from Cradle to Cradle, and ask who today would allow a sector to :
Put billions of pounds of toxic materials in the air water and ground every year
Produces materials so dangerous they require constant vigilance by future generations
Results in gigantic volume of waste
Puts valuable materials in holes all over the planet
Requires thousands of complex regulations – not to keep people and nature safe, but to keep them from being poisoned too quickly
Measures productivity based on how few people are working?
Creates prosperity by digging up or cutting down natural resources and then burning or burying them
Erodes the diversity of species and cultural practices.
McDonough and Braunghart were referring to the industrial revolution in these ‘consequences’, but they do describe the construction sector oh so well. OK so no-one today would allow such a sector which exhibited these ‘by- products’ a licence to trade, so why then do we allow the ‘built environment’ to continue doing so but at a reduced rate? As McDonough and Braunghart comment – doing only a little good may well be doing no good.
Indeed Janis Birkeland comments in her argument for Positive Development – if we build all new buildings to the highest, greenest standards, then the net contribution to carbon reductions would be only 0.04%.
And with this in mind, the questions that kept forming last week included:
How much do we spend within the global built environment on waste management, (disposal, recycling, regulation, etc) in comparison to the amount spent on eliminating waste full stop, through for example cradle-to-cradle paradigm thinking?
A rule of thumb is that the built environment uses 40% materials, creates 40% waste and generates 40% emissions. Ed Mazria from Architecture 2030 puts this figure higher at 48.5%. We need to monitor and watch these figures reduce, but at the moment the production of cement remains responsible for about 7% of all carbon dioxide emissions. Am I the only one who feels guilty with these?
Indeed another rule of thumb puts the quarrying sector at a third contribution – but what proportion from this sector is used to derive materials for construction? If the Cradle to Cradle authors are correct then the consumer (end user) only deals with 5% of the total waste of a product, the remainder 95% is waste created in manufacture.
So why are zero carbon definitions largely ignoring embodied energy and putting them in the ‘too difficult to deal with box’ ? Dealing only or mainly with a carbon zero definition for buildings in use?
Passivhaus is emerging as the aspirational darling or solution. But what is the true embodied energy of passivhaus, in particular the massive amounts of insulation, sheeting and duct tape? Passivhaus will reduce energy requirements and costs. Excellent. But I would love to see the payback time on the total and higher than normal embodied energies and waste.
Why are plastic, polyurethane and uvpc now considered green (such products now abound at eco exhibitions and within green guides) based it would seem solely on their performance, not on the harm done during production.
Why doesn’t BREEAM and LEED make more of a focus on embodied energy in its scoring?
Oh and why isn’t responsible sourcing to BS6000 more widely known or enforced?
Are we trying to solve the built environment environmental problems with the same mode of thinking that created them in the first place? I have always accepted that within sustainability we will make mistakes, take dead ends and end up in cul de sacs, and that this is all part of the learning and moving forward. But is time running our too quickly, to be so ‘narrow’ and we are just storing another problem for future generations to deal with?
Are we looking down the telescope the wrong way? Turn it around and we may see the scale and maybe solutions to our problems.
We are in a period of developing strategies, codes and defining zero carbon itself. Now is the time for that debate to be wider, for a collaborative debate across the sectors that make up the built environment, from raw materials to end users. And here is where I mention be2camp, as it is through web technologies (in both the widest and most specific aspects) that will allow and enable such debate and dialogue to take place.
And as the Cradle-to-Cradle sub heading says – its time to remake the way we make things
(This is a rewitten and shortened and hopefully bettered reasoned version of the rant I started at the end of last week)
In support of our local rural Community Enterprise we are in the process of developing a PR strategy. Following discussions with PR friends so far, my experiences and messages picked up from twitter friends I arrived at the following ‘checklist’ as a starter.
Posting here as it may help others but also to seek more help in developing this strategy. We will be meeting as a publicity sub-group early next week with potential professional help so any comments, amendments or additions to the following more would extremely welcome.
Thanks
There have been a good number of conversations on twitter recently in discussing collaborative procurement and collaborative contract management. It is amazing that such a dialogue can take place in just 140 characters at a time, reinforcing the potential of twitter and why there should be more adoption within the built environment for knowledge and improvement share.
Su Butcher over at Just Practicing blogged on the design and build conversation, and to pick up on that (and to complete a few promises for more information to those in the twitter conversations) here is my contribution, that links together D+B, PQQ,s Clustering and Integrated Project Management
Early engagement in a project is essential for all parties and stakeholders, to ensure best possible outcomes for meeting client / end users needs, value, quality, time, sustainability, and community impact. The classic chart opposite that shows opportunities for change (read improvement, or adding value) mapped against cost of doing the same demonstrates the potential of early involvement.
Typically – (I would say historically but I know it is current, and even the term historically adds some kind of respectability to poor practice) the contracting team is not appointed until the brief and design are ready for build. Even worst the project build team is not assembled until after the main contractor and then progressively throughout the construction programme.
Design Build moves the engagement of the project design and build main players to earlier in the process, often following brief or concept design. This is good yet still leaves these parties out of the brief and out of any value management exercise, where undoubtedly they can add real value.
Bringing the project design and build teams in on day or week zero can be achieved through mature frameworks and or relationships, along with mature cost and contract arrangements. End users and FM should likewise be part of the early engagement, or ideally there first , engaging the others as the project process drivers.
This leads to an Integrated Project Team, which looks, feels and acts very differently from a traditional project organisational structure. Issues such as co location in one office, shared and seconded staff across the project all add to an effective delivery of value. But as has been commented in the twitter conversations this approach is rarely practiced to its full potential, and arguably not since Building Down Barriers.
(But see the Highways Agency ECI, Early Contractor Involvement approach)
In addition, whilst the contractor may be engaged at an earlier stage, to add value they really need to engage with their supply chains, ideally adopting clusters around elements of construction. This allows specialist and build-ability knowledge into design, but necessitating. again mature, supplier relationships or ready-to-go (RTG) clusters.
Appointment of the players in this collaborative and integrated model requires careful selection, and arguably cost should not feature at all. Ideally trusted players from previous contracts, ie supply chains or clusters would be assembled, as happens elsewhere in other sectors.
Such integrated approaches are essential in achieving improvement to predictability of time and cost, adding value and meeting the project objectives.
Pre-Qualification Questions, PQQ’s, interviews, visits, collaborative workshops etc as part of the selection should focus on procuring the designers, contracting, facilities management teams etc based on such issues as proven approaches to achieving requirements and reducing budget costs through tackling waste in the process. There is estimated to be 30% waste of time, material, effort, documentation management etc in the overall project process – and so really tackling this can produce far greater savings than through selection on price to get lowest or best value prices. (But the thread of Higher Costs from Lower Prices is another blog subject!, as is the poorly understood difference between cost and price)
I guess I should point out that a far amount of my support time to clients, contracts and contractors is spent on facilitating this type of integrated working, or some of the individual components thereof.
And the interest in this approach? Well that would appear to be on the increase (at least on paper unfortunately), as, in current economic circumstances, contractors seek approaches that would offer improved value and reduce costs for their clients in an attempt to differentiate them from competition and win work.
The culture of mistrust and baggage of the industry though really prevents real progress. But, as we cannot fix the problems of today’s industry with the thinking that created the problems – new thinking is required, new thinking in terms of early engagement, integrated, clustered project management.
_______________________
Twitter Conversationists in their own words (twitter profiles) included:
The_Architect : Manchester, UK. Chartered Architect, Music lover. Frank Lloyd Wright expert and a Romantic soul.
LizMale: Buckinghamshire. PR consultant specialising in UK construction and sustainability in the built environment
EEPaul: SE England, London SE3, Woking London-based blogger on IT, SaaS, construction, PR, marketing and Web 2.0 stuff (also a Crewe Alex FC fan, Wikipedian, cyclist)
Fairsnape: Forest of Bowland Lancs UK. Supporting, shaping and commenting on trends, web stuff, improvements and futures in the built environment
Melstarrs: London or Leeds, UK Green Building Design Engineer and Accreditation Professional (CIBSE, BREEAM & LEED)
ConstructingExc: London. Constructing Excellence is the single organisation charged with driving the change agenda in construction, housing and regeneration.
SuButcher: Essex, UK Practice Manager for No-nonsense Architects Barefoot & Gilles. Tweets on the UK Construction and Property Industry, blog at http://www.justpractising.com
Geoffwilkinson: UK Building Regulations Expert, Fire Engineer, Arsenal Fan, Partial to the odd Real Ale
PaulDohertyAIA: Shanghai. New York Architect, Living and Working in Shanghai, China
HotelDesigns: Croydon, Surrey. we are the online magEzine for the hotel interior design industry featuring directory, news, reviews and more!
Su Butcher has posted an excellent and very useful comment on PassivHaus being about saving energy over on her blog, Just Practicing. I did comment there in brief but here is a more detailed response.
Relationship with Code 6 and Carbon Definition As was reported from the Zero Hub consultation Passiv Haus is the aspirational target of the UK zero carbon definition, not only for domestic but for a wider scope of building.
Challenges The PassivHaus challenges are not just within in design. (With all the eco-kit, materials, knowledge and lessons from PassivHaus in use out there, the ‘design’ of passivhaus is now arguably just a process to repeat)
Challenges lie, in my view, in three areas:
Construction. Construction of PassivHaus will require a far higher level of quality and fit than we are used to (at least in the UK) . Research at Leeds Met is showing that the retro investigation and remedial work to fix or improve on failed air tightness tests can be prohibitively expensive and may well become commonplace.
I am excited and impressed that one of my clients, a Lancashire house building contractor are building /eco- refurbing one of their own properties to learn and understand the new issues involved in PassivHaus (they are also doing the same to CSH6 + I hope to get a case study together soon)
End Users – the challenge here is to engage with the hearts and minds of potential PassivHaus dwellers. Ask anyone (esp with a family) if they would want to live in a PH and most often the response would be no. And that is on the house ‘image’ – there is also the life style of living in a sealed box with minimal user ventilation that needs addressing. This may apply to all modern eco-homes in what Greer refers to unforgivingly vertical houses not being designed for practical family life. (And does anyone else have the Peter Seger song Little Boxes playing in the mind when looking at / reviewing / visiting modern new eco homes?)
Existing Stock – Here the challenge is to move the PassivHaus debate and design considerations away from new build home to PassivHaus eco renewal, and away from just homes to commercial, industrial and public buildings.
…
Fairsnape 