We recently had this credit denied based on the fact that our contract did not explicitly state that the 10 month follow-up review is included in the activities of EAc3, even though we provided a confirmation letter that was signed by both parties and stated that we were contracted for both Fundamental and Enhanced Commissioning, including post-construction commissioning activities.
This appears to go above and beyond any requirement I know. If you follow the logic of the reviewer, the contract would have to explicitly name each commissioning task in order to count towards the credit. However, that was not requested, just the 10-month review.
We are now appealing this decision by providing the actual post-construction commissioning report with a timeline that shows that the review was carried out within the 10 months.
No real question here but just sharing our experience and inviting comments.
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Scott Bowman
LEED FellowIntegrated Design + Energy Advisors, LLC
LEEDuser Expert
519 thumbs up
October 6, 2014 - 10:25 am
Gina, thank you for sharing. Just a couple of questions. First, did this come up in pre-review questions at all? Seems like this should be the kind of thing that should have been handled in that way. Having to appeal and pay that cost for something that is so obviously correct is not good. I have heard some refer to this kind of thing as a "phantom requirement". The good thing about an appeal is it will go to a different reviewer.
Not that I am agreeing with them, but I have always recommended a detailed scope in the contract that does spell out these kinds of tasks, but frankly that has more with making sure that the scope is correct, and there are things that are quite valuable and go beyond LEED requirements. It also helps to protect from low scope/low cost providers.
Nilo Regojo
28 thumbs up
October 20, 2014 - 11:38 am
We included the follow up review in our Cx contract scope but didn't complete the follow up visit within 10 months of project completion. Can we still pursue the Enhanced Cx credit?
Scott Bowman
LEED FellowIntegrated Design + Energy Advisors, LLC
LEEDuser Expert
519 thumbs up
October 25, 2014 - 10:44 pm
Well, that is another problem. The idea of the review with this timing is that the contractors would typically still be under warranty at that time, and could address any new action items that might come out of the review. It sounds like you have not done your submittal yet, so at this point the reviewers would expect to see the report based on the date of substantial completion.
Since we normally upload information well before 10 months, KJWW included a chapter in the report, but it is blank. There have been projects that went that long, and so we did the visit, wrote it up, and put it in the report we had already uploaded. If the project is already certified, then the owner gets some punched pages ready to go into their binder.
So, you have not complied with that requirement. Since you have done all the work, I would do the review immediately, and hopefully your contractors will be reasonable and work to resolve any action items that come up. Then submit and beg for forgiveness. State the facts and what you did to resolve the condition, and hope for the best.
You could also contact them for a conference call to discuss the situation as well.