From my point of view, I would have liked to actually use one of these tools, but each time I asked for pricing, we couldn't even think of using it, they were too expensive. At least for international-based projects.
I agree with the quote on LEEDUser. This site really makes my day.
Tommy Linstroth
CEOGreen Badger
LEEDuser Expert
119 thumbs up
November 9, 2016 - 10:52 am
As founder of Green Badger, and a recovering LEED consultant and LEED Fellow, we looked for a tool that was actually collaborative, eliminated the ridiculous spreadsheets, and allowed for actual documentation to be created rather than just track tasks and to do's. As none of the offerings that were on the market did any of that, I launched Green Badger. It is geared specifically towards LEED construction - because that is the most fluid part of the process. Frankly, you could document design credits from 50% CDs - but then it turns into 1, 2, 3+ years of construction in an industry fraught with turnover while trying to track dozens if not hundreds of data points, products, reports and inspections.
After experiencing first hand the typical tools and challenges - spreadsheets that get lost in translation, teams that say they are doing documentation when none gets done, having to do anything in LEED Online besides hit submit (woe be the project teams I've spoken to that use LEED Online as an actual workflow tool on a day to day basis), we created a better solution - a cloud based, web and mobile platform that provides unlimited team collaboration, centralized data to prevent spreadsheets from disappearing, the ability to create real time IAQ and ESC reports, instant product verification for thousands of low-emitting products (and soon v4 products), and for those working on more than 1 project, a dashboard to view LEED credit compliance across multiple projects all in 1 spot (rather than sifting through 5 spreadsheets for each project).
If any of this saves you 1-2 hours of billable time a month, it pays for itself, and having worked on nearly 100 LEED projects personally, I can attest it saves way more than that. Cost is always a barrier when the only thing you compare it to is I'm not paying anything currently, just my time (which is not free). Just like you weren't "paying" to file your taxes when you kept a box of receipts and filled a 1040 out by hand, spending money on TurboTax ended up making sense. I can't comment on the other technologies mentioned, but for workflow solutions that actually automate/create documentation and provide real time verification, rather than just be a task management tool that operates nearly the same as LEED Online, there is value to be had.