I am working on a project where the majority of our FSC wood is in the furniture. We are working with a furniture distributor who is supply multiple manfacturer's (i.e. Knoll, Krug, Nevins, etc) products. Under LEED CI v2.0 the template requires you to upload ALL of your vendor invoices for FSC wood (showing all wood items on a line item basis). Obvioulsy, the wood is part of a larger assembly such as a chair or a desk, so how do I provide invoices highlighting the individual wood materials? The furniture distributor would only have invoices listing the pieces of furniture supplied and obviously the manufacturer is not just ordering FSC wood for our specific project but their manufacturing facility as a whole. Help!
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Walt Gosciewski
Engineering ManagerWestmark Products inc
5 thumbs up
February 7, 2011 - 2:23 pm
I am a woodworker so I am assuming its the same for furniture. Your furniture distributior needs to have a FSC Chain of Custody number. He creates and invoice separating the FSC furniture from the non FSC furniture. Since this is an assembly, the wood needs to be separated out from the other materials and the dollar amount or weight/volume adjusted accordingly. This is stated in a 2008 USGBC.
If the distributor does not have a FSC chain of custody number, I don't believe you can apply the wood towards the FSC credit.
Good luck!
Kevin Mortensen
Chief Sustainability Officer - LEED Green AssociateComplete Millwork Services
164 thumbs up
February 7, 2011 - 3:11 pm
First let me make sure that I understand your position.
- You are purchasing furniture from a distributor of FSC furniture. Correct? So they are selling you FSC Certified furniture.
If this is the case than here is the process.
You have just purchased a fabric covered chair. That chair is sold with a FSC Claim, however the entire dollar value of that chair does not count toward the MR7 Credit because you only count the new wood portion of that chair. Per the addenda & Cir's found on USGBC's website you would have to make an educated decision about how much of the weight of that chair is FSC wood material and how much is springs, fabric, cushioning etc. If 50% of the weight of that chair is FSC wood, than 50% of the chair cost is what you would put in your FSC column of the MR7 Credit.
You would need to include the documentation on how you arrived at the wood weight figure in your submittals to GBCI.
I would encourage you to involve the chair manufacturer as much as possible in coming to this conclusion of how much of that product is wood weight and how much is other materials.
Perhaps having a letter form the manufacturer that backs up your conclusion would be good to have.
Doug Pierce, AIA
Architect / Sustainability StrategistPerkins+Will
235 thumbs up
February 7, 2011 - 3:55 pm
Kevin has a good suggestion - The Manufacturers should be able to tell you about the quantity of FSC wood in the chair and have supporting information to back that up. Unless the furniture is mostly wood, the furniture piece is not likely to be an FSC Certified Assembly. Therefore, as Kevin notes, you need to split out the value of the wood from the value of the other components in the furniture.
Knoll has been a solid supporter of FSC, so they should be able to tell you what their breakout is.
Let us know how it goes!
dp
Nancy Goshow
Managing PartnerGoshow Architects
39 thumbs up
February 7, 2011 - 5:38 pm
I have all the documentation from the furniture manufacturers regarding percentage (weights) of FSC wood in the various products and I have all of their FSC COC #s. Thats not my problem.
My problem is when you go to the LEED online template there is a box you need to check confirming that you have uploaded "All vendor invoices for wood products that contain FSC certified wood."
I don't have vendor invoices for the furniture vendors that lists FSC wood as a line item. The invoice we can get from the furniture distributor would list the various furniture model numbers as a line item. For example they would say (14) Task Chairs, Model X - $2,000, (2) Conference Tables, Model Y - $3,000, etc. Those invoices wouldn't say chair made from, fabric, steel, and $200 FSC Pure wood.
Basically I have all of the FSC info from the vendors I just don't have the invoices as back up proof to upload and since LEED online (CI v2.0) requires it I am not quite sure how to proceed.