GBCI rules it is 4 Categories, not 4 Items, and denies credit

LEEDuser Expert

472 thumbs up

February 4, 2010

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Andrea Traber

Director, Sustainable Buildings and Operations

KEMA

LEEDuser Basic Member

46 thumbs up

Sat, 02/06/2010 - 00:58

How very unfortunate. Your team clearly had a solid grasp of the intent of the credit, met it (in my opinion) and documented it adequately. It is very frustrating when nuanced interpretations are made and appeal is the only remedy. Though you understandably chose not to appeal the decision, there may be value in forwarding this experience back to the TAG and USGBC staff for informational purposes, as it would at least suggest that this credit requires clarification. In my view this is one reason why the current CIR process (not posting them) is not satisfactory; It does not allow for "daylighting" difficult issues or provide a method for educating future users. Thank you for sharing your painful experience with other interested LEED users.

Patricia Brezny

Project Designer

SfL+a Architects

LEEDuser Basic Member

5 thumbs up

Mon, 11/08/2010 - 18:43

Michelle, This info may be too late to act on, but I was looking for info about GPM vs. GPH for WEc4 and downloaded the latest (Nov. 3 2010) addenda for LEED for Schools v.3. The Addenda Item that would help you was posted on 7/19/2010 well after your credit was rejected and states for WEc4: In the first line of the third bullet item, replace "At least 4 process items" with "All appliances within at least 4 equipment types" The USGBC Addenda website states "Project teams are required to adhere to the Rating System addenda based on registration date." That requirement should not apply to your project which was submitted prior to the addenda. I would make a big deal about it. GBCI should be required to follow the rules established by USGBC and not make up the rules as they go.

LEEDuser Expert

472 thumbs up

Wed, 12/08/2010 - 15:43

Patricia – Thanks for directing me to this resource (and thanks Tristan for pointing me back to Patricia’s comment). I just realized that my inquiry was posted under LEED 2009 but the credit was actually denied under LEED for Schools v2.0. Sorry I did not make that clear at the top of the post. The language of the credits was the same in both versions until the 7/19/10 addendum item for WEc4 (http://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=6392 (see page 21)). That addendum item is a great clarification for LEED for Schools 2009 teams; however, I don’t think that this would change the situation for my project (even if I could utilize an addendum item from another version of the rating system to set precedent). Maybe they even used our project as a reason to change the language? I think USGBC has greatly improved the requirements and made it clearer for other teams though and this will help them avoid a situation like we had (we only had 3 equipment types – not the now required 4 – but we had addressed all appliances within those 3 equipment types for a total of 5 process items). I still think we got a raw deal but we’ve moved on and I’m glad other teams won’t have to have this credit denied thanks to the new language.