I am working on the LEED Certification of a 23,000sq.ft. concrete "business continuity" dome. It is literally a concrete dome. This building type was selected because it is resilient to hurricane weather and it is also typically more efficient than typical construction types.

The engineer for this project says that in terms of energy modeling he think he should compare a "dome to a dome". Doing so, our demonstrated efficiency is a lot less than if we were to compare a dome to a conventional building type. In my opinion, we should be doing the latter because the decision to use a dome over a conventional building was a design decision. But we do not know what to expect from GBCI reviewers.

Can anyone advise?