Bike Rack requirements for buildings outside project scope

Just more new review nonsense from the reviewers.

It appears that the reviewers are insisting that the multiple-building rules (AGMBC) must be used for any standalone LEED project on a campus.

What if the campus is a large university? Are the reviewers demanding that a LEED building more than 200 yards from a non-LEED building prove that the non-LEED building occupants do not use the bike racks provided for the LEED building? Oops, "reviewer discretion" used to justify this type of demand seems to have missed a major part of the requirement; bicycle storage and showers must be within a certain distance to be claimed.

Previously, I have seen new demands about LEED NC is a "whole building rating system" which is being taken as a demand to document parts of a project not only outside the scope of work, but that are inconsistent with the LEED 40:60 certification rules which helps determine which rating system should be used to certify a project that could be under two LEED systems.

The 40:60 rule means of a project is 40% one LEED system type (NC, CI, CS, etc) and 60% another system type, then the project is free to use whichever LEED rating system they choose. But, what is happening is if you pick LEED NC and are partially LEED CS you are required to follow optional credits in CS as mandatory in LEED NC. The reviewers shoe-horn the CS credits into LEED NC credits the project is pursuing.

This review nonsense absolutely has to stop. There are no published rules provided by the USGBC for the GBCI and LEED users to follow. The Reference Guides have become useless. You now have to guess what the project requirements are, and worse, could possibly be.

The text below is from the AGMBC, dated October 31, 2011. This was more than likely released after your project was registered for LEED. To invoke the AGMBC you have to create a Master Site as defined by that document.

You haven't created a AGBMC LEED Master Site. You are not required to. Yet, the requirements are being imposed on your projects. Worse, these requirements were created late last year, meaning they shouldn't be applicable.

LEED campus boundary:
The site area defined as the LEED project boundary for all campus credits. This may be the legal limits of the shared site (e.g. property boundary) or an alternative boundary for LEED purposes. The LEED campus boundary must be a single unbroken site, unless the non‐contiguous parcels meet the conditions stated in the MPR Supplemental Guidance.

LEED Project Boundary:
The portion of the project site submitted for LEED certification. For single building developments, this is the entire project scope and is generally limited to the site boundary. For multiple building developments, the LEED project boundary may be a portion of the development as determined by the project team.

While I agree with Hernando that the AGMBC does not have to be implemented just because your project is on a campus, I also see the poorly stated review comment EH's project received. When it comes to site amenities like bike racks, i believe that the GBCI is trying to ensure that they are not counted twice. This has forced me into understanding our clients overall sites and accounting for things repeatedly. For example, I have a bike rack in front of a non LEED building with a capacity of say 8 slots. This non LEED building would take 5 slots if it were LEED (yes, running FTE calcs for a non LEED project). For my adjacent LEED project, that left 3 slots I can count for that project. For the third project that is also LEED, I'm out of racks and have to add them into the project site. But when I document, I run them through the math all over again including FTE information for all 3 projects. It is a pain but now that i know, it is done and done consistently.

Susan,

I am doing something similar for a complex campus project. There are four primary buildings. One is not LEED. Two are LEED NC v2.2 which are my LEED projects. One is LEED NC 2009 by a different LEED Consultant. We cannot use the LEED Online AGMBC documentation path because it is restricted to LEED v2009 only. Instead I am providing common LEED documentation for all three projects, making sure the most strict requirements for the two versions of LEED NC are met.

Long ago --about 2-years-- I decided that the right thing to do to get around the ever changing reviews was to document the entire campus.

We have a total campus occupancy FTE count, with visitors as well as retail customers. We have distributed the bike slots based on estimated usage of each of the four primary buildings.

Not only have we included bikes, but did the same distribution and allocation for carpool parking for SS Credit 4.4 and similar for low-emitting vehicles.

I expect to run into trouble for the location of parking for green cars for SS Credit 4.3. The vehicles are owned by the owner and are parking in an interior secure parking lot. The vehicles are in closest parking spaces to the three LEED buildings but there are closer parking spaces to the the non-LEED building. The trouble with the closer spaces is that they are intended for employee parking which are outside the secure lot.

The two projects will be submitted for review in the next month. I will fill you all in on the results. The owner is pushing for three LEED Platinum projects. We'll see how it goes.

Dear E.H. - We'll contact you offline to review your concerns specific to your project. For anyone else, if you ever have any questions or concerns relative to your review comments, you can always get in touch with us - including your LEED Reviewer - by selecting "Questions About Review Comments" from http://www.gbci.org/org-nav/contact/Contact-Us/Project-Certification-Que.... If we aren't able to resolve your issue by email - or you just want to talk through it - selecting "Follow Up to Prior GBCI Reply" from the same url will give you the option to request a phone call with your LEED Reviewer. Hope this helps - MRS

But, "of all LEED project users" means your LEED project only and nothing outside of the project boundary. LEED Project boundary is clearly defined in the LEED MPRs and certification requirement documents.

LEED Project boundary is how projects have been certified since day 1 of LEED. This is something "new" and undocumented.

This is a new requirement that was recently "invented" and is now being enforced without the USGBC/GBCI bothering to update the LEED Reference Guides via an appropriate addenda.

Do we similarly require parking lots to have signs that say spaces may only be used by occupants of this building?

This "rule" would force every LEED project on a campus to use the AGMBC regardless of the owner's intent to certify only one building.

The LEED Project Boundary needs to be selectively expanded, based on the credits pursued, to comply with this new demand, and worse, there are no rules about exactly what the USGBC/GBCI wants you to do.

We are left to guess and make up our own rules and wait until the reviewers tell us we were wrong, because new requirements were published just the week before, long after your project was registered, and even after it was submitted for review. Amazing...

Bill Swanson: Yes. I just got a review back saying that the reserved parking spaces need to be for building occupants only. I don't think the rest of the spaces would need to be designated LEED building-only.

My comment was intended as sarcasm. Seems I was beaten to the punchline.

Don't all of these signs start reducing the sense of community? Regardless, this is scope creep. There is no mention of restricting access in the Credit language. And what's the point, it's not like any of this signage gets enforced. Why be so super strict in documenting something that is so fluid? I love the fail photo here.
http://www.reallifeleed.com/2008/10/leed-and-parking-lessons-learned.html

On my middle and high school projects -- more than 10-- bike racks are rarely used. Bike riding is not cool. Skateboards are cool.

Skateboards wind up stuffed in lockers, much to the unhappiness of school officials.

I created a LI asking for an equivalence to bike spaces for kids that to securely store their skate boards. Seems logical. Anybody who has kids knows that skateboarding is a preferred method of getting to school, unless a kid is lucky enough to have a car.

Well, the USGBC decided that skateboards were not a preferred mode transportation for kids. They stated that a usage study must be conducted to prove kids would actually use skateboards to get to school. How the usage study was to be conducted was not defined by the USGBC. A study certain to be rejected as inadequate by the reviewers based on some criteria only they have access to.

We dropped pursuit of this option, and now have LEED accepted bicycle parking that is mostly unused. Skateboards continue to be stuffed in lockers.

I inquired about citi bike being able to contribute to this credit and it was denied although it does meet the intent. There should be more options or flexibility with this.