Removing an atrium, for example, due to high cost may provide additional saleable floor area, but may also reduce daylight penetration while increasing the lighting and conditioning loads.
Make sure mechanical spaces and locations are coordinated in the architectural and structural drawings. For example, is a duct run colliding with a beam? Is a fan coil unit placed above a door opening so that it will leak condensate on people walking into the space? Common mistakes like this can cause construction delays and poor performance during operations if not detected, so coordination of the drawings is critical, especially if your project involves integrated design and complex systems.
Energy systems are only as efficient as they are well-installed and operated—involve the operations team during the final Construction Documents phase (or even much earlier) to make sure they are abreast of design decisions and prepared to operate in the sequence required.
Specify and contract for efficiency measures. Often new equipment and novel systems are unknown to contractors, so hold bid and construction meetings to ensure your specifications are understood and everything is purchased and installed as intended.
Assess your compliance with the credit and projected points to be earned. This credit and option can be the largest contributor to your LEED point total, so if you aren’t hitting your goal, consider last minute design changes now.
While the LEED Online submittal template does not require detailed documentation for each Core Performance Guide requirement, it is important that each item be documented and reviewed by the rest of the team to confirm compliance, especially as further documentation may be requested by during review. Your design team should work with the owner to identify cost-effective strategies that can be pursued for the project.
Complete at least half of the energy modeling effort by the end of the design development stage. Help the design team to finalize strategy through intensive, early efforts in energy modeling. Once the team has a design direction, the modeler can develop a second model during the construction documents phase for final confirmation.
A cost-benefit analysis can help the owner understand the return on investment of big-ticket, energy-conserving equipment that lowers operating energy bills with a quick payback.
If your project is pursuing renewable energy, the energy generated is accounted for by using the PRM. These results provide information about whether the energy is contributing to EAc2: Onsite Renewable Energy.
