First public comment draft of LEED v5 BD+C/ID+C: Integrative Process

Overall I like the three prereqs in this category! I think they strike a good balance between being open-ended enough to cover a broad range of project types, and being rigorous enough that project teams have to do something substantive to earn them. The subject matter of the prereqs are the basic things I think every project needs to address. 

One concern I have is where specific document requirements are in the credit language e.g. "Complete the LEED Project Team Checklist for Social Impact." I would like to see a reduction in documentation created solely for LEED. For example, if a campus or large corporate developer already has done social impact audits, the team should be able to provide relevant sections from those documents plus an annotated site plan showing how the goals were worked into the design. I think it would be especially important for project teams where some of this assessment work has already been done to be rewarded for that and not need to re-write to fit a prescribed format. 

One other thing that jumped out at me: "Engage in research and consultation with key stakeholders and community members" as part of the Social Equity prereq. I am not sure this is a good fit for a LEED prereq. Community and stakeholder outreach should ideally take place early in the process, often before LEED is under consideration, so the outreach done might not be in line with what this prerq asks for. There are also so many gray areas here (who are the right stakeholders, what is enough outreach, did the input have enough of an effect on design choices) that I'm not sure how it can be fairly and consistently evaluated in the LEED review process. I think the credit requirements inherently push project teams to do this outreach and research which is great, but enforcing it as a standalone requirement would be very difficult especially in terms of maintaining consistent LEED reviews. 

Where did the most important credit in the V4 scorecard go? The site assessment credit is the starting point of any project to understand the context in which a project is embedded and to explore what the opportunities and challenges are and how that informs the design process. i would advocate for including this as a prerequisite in the integrative process category

Instead of growing the application of an integrative process from what was an initial introduction of this process, it seems that there is less emphasis on an integrative process. There is even no mention anymore of the role of an integrative process facilitator. I would advocate for a stronger presence of an integrative process.