I had posted this comment during the first public comment period, but there was not much in the way of response, so I wanted to bounce it off this group for feedback - I am curious about the new requirements for documenting 9 different specific strategies / analyses - I recognize the benefit of increased integration, but I am curious about why this is required under this credti. If I have six strategies that can get me to 50% energy savings, is that better than nine strategies that get me to 50%? Shouldn't those requirements be in the Integrated Design section? I think the point strategy for increased performance based on more different investigations should be incentive enough, and I am concerned that this will require more documentation without necessarily providing better results. Thoughts?
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Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5900 thumbs up
September 15, 2011 - 10:19 am
The increased points for higher performance are not enough of an incentive to do design phase modeling for most projects in my experience.
The purpose of requiring at least some design phase modeling was to end the practice of doing a model at the end solely for the purpose of determining LEED points. It needs to be in the modeling credit to have this effect.
I agree that we may not see better results on some projects and the requirements are somewhat arbitrary. The purpose of modeling is to guide decision-making during design. Too much of our industry has curcumvented this purpose becasue LEED allows us to do so. The credit must encourage/require projects to use modeling for its intended purpose.
If anyone has a specific suggestion about how best to encourage/require project teams to use energy modeling during the design process (and not just at the end) I'd love to hear it.
Jonathan Weiss
Jacobs Buildings & Infrastructure215 thumbs up
November 2, 2011 - 2:31 pm
I have to say that although this seemed perfectly reasonable when you initially posted it, I have been pondering it for a bit and still have concerns. I think the new credits being put in place for integrative design process are the right place to incentivize early integration and simulation. My experience is that for any project where we want to get higher levels of energy savings we need to do these early models in any case. But by adding this requirement here in EAc1, it adds to the overhead of doing LEED Documentation. If I do a set of studies to get to 60% energy savings, that is great. But now I will need to document more for LEED for the same results. Hypothetically speaking, if I do a business as usual "model too late" process and still save 60% of energy, is that worse than if I do a set of studies earlier on and still get to the 60%? My experience is that without the studies I won't get to 60%. But I believe that it should be equivalent in the eyes of LEED to get the savings regardless of process, and then reward the process elsewhere. Thoughts?
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5900 thumbs up
November 3, 2011 - 12:06 pm
If you are already doing the modeling studies during design this requirement would not add any addtional overhead related to LEED documentation. The details will need to be worked out but I would envision simply sending copies of your early stage modeling reports. It will also be possible to submit other studies to substitute for the early stage models as long as you can make connections to decision drivers during design. In this case a narrative would be used to describe the process (which would possibly add to the LEED documentation burden).
Of course in the case of projects with 60% savings it is not worse. Those projects are very few and far between when submitted for LEED. This requirement is directed at the vast majority of the market not doing design phase studies. I would suggest that the vast majority of 60% savings projects did design phase modeling or have done it in the past.
We want to use LEED to drive higher and higher levels of performance (that is its purpose). As you say you would have trouble getting to the higher levels of performance without design phase modeling. I am still blown away by the fact that the market does not get this. I never even imagined that the majority of folks would do validation models at the end. It just demonstrates that most folks simply do not even understand the purpose of modeling. I do not know of another more effective way to have them get it than to make it a requirement.
The idea of rewarding process elsewhere has merit but I am concerned that it would not be enough of a driver to affect the market change needed.