We have an unusual case in an airport project I am working on. It is LEED-CI as we are refurbishing a passenger concourse and some of the back-of-house spaces that go with it. There are 11 jetways ("Passenger Boarding Bridges", or "PBBs" in the industry parlance); 4 are being replaced with new, 3 are staying where they are and being refurbished with paint and carpet, and 4 are being taken out of service at another terminal in the airport so we are moving those to our terminal. The PBBs have a number of architectural components: steel structure, interior carpet, paint, etc., and a lot of MEP components too: they supply air, water and electricity to parked aircraft. It seems like re-using the 4 PBB's should count as part of MR 3, it's less clear to me whether the 3 refurbished in place also count.
In general, it's a little unclear whether the line about changing the use of a product is that important here. The ref guide says a door reused as a table counts (of course the table should count as furniture, right, so maybe make that millwork?), but so does door hardware reused as door hardware. A CIv2.0 CIR dated 7/2/2008 says "reused materials are materials that were manufactured, used for their intended purpose, and are being included in a build-out for that same purpose again." By that standard, all 7 of my PBB's would count, wouldn't they? Do you think I'd have to subtract out some fraction of their dollar value to account for the MEP components?
Eric Shamp
Associate Vice PresidentCannonDesign
68 thumbs up
February 27, 2011 - 11:25 pm
I was curious about this one, so I checked the CSI Master Format division list. Technically, it would seem that PBBs would fall under division 34 (34 77 13 Passenger Loading Bridges), and would therefore not qualify for inclusion in any of the MR credits, at least according to the MR credit metrics chart in the Reference Guide.
As I understand it, the reason LEED requires exclusion of HVAC, electrical, equipment, special construction, etc, etc, is that the cost of these products is weighted more heavily towards the engineering and unique construction/manufacturing requirements and less towards the actual material that goes into them. Inclusion of these types of items would throw all of the material calculations out of whack. Meaning, even if you were able to deduct the cost of the MEP components from the PBBs, you'd still end up with a skewed material cost.
The only way I could see attempting this would be to work with the PBB manufacturer to determine the true cost of materials (an additive approach), rather than the deductive approach of subtracting the cost of MEP components. You'd also have to deduct any other assemblies that wouldn't easily fit within CSI divisions 2-10... wheels, tires, suspensions, and drive motors come to mind. It would be a lot of work, and still a gamble, and I'm not sure it would pay off considering the paltry materials you'd have left compared to the materials going into the remainder of the project.