LEED C&S - No Landscaping in Scope

Levi Jimenez

Founder & Senior Consultant

Viable LLC

LEEDuser Premium Member

12 thumbs up

March 1, 2023

We have a LEED v4.1 Core & Shell project with no Landscaping in the scope of work. The existing landscaping is anticipated to remain with conventional irrigation components, rainbirds and timed controllers, nothing fancy. The existing irrigation is not expected to meet the minimum performance requirement. The added cost of improving landscaping to meet the prerequisite is not an attractive prospect to the client, given the length of payback. If the scope of work is limited to only the building interior and base building components, do we qualify for a special circumstance or do we need to renovate the irrigation systems to compy with minimum performance requirement requirements?

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Dave Hubka

Practice Leader - Sustainability

EUA

LEEDuser Expert

510 thumbs up

Thu, 03/02/2023 - 04:39

Hello Levi, We had a similar project in which the building/site were owner occupied. The existing site had an existing irrigation system still in use. But since the scope of work was only interior and base building components we took the project through a LEED CI certification. This rating system does not include an Outdoor Water Use Reduction prereq or credit. For BD+C projects the ref guide states "projects may not enter zero water requirements for any landscaped areas". So my guess is you will need to switch rating systems or upgrade the irrigation or remove the irrigation system and select native/adapted plant species. You could also submit a LEED Interpretation request through LEED Online, but my guess is that GBCI will not allow teams to exclude existing irrigation systems within the LEED Project Boundary. Hope you find this to be helpful. best, Dave

Levi Jimenez

Founder & Senior Consultant

Viable LLC

LEEDuser Premium Member

12 thumbs up

Thu, 03/02/2023 - 14:12

Thanks Dave, I really appreciate your quick reply. It is a complete whole building renovation but there is no tenant yet, so we felt that the Core & Shell was the preferred path. I will look more into whether or not a CI Cert. would work better for this team. There will however, be no furnishings, and no zone ducting for ventilation, only stubs for connecting the eventual tenant systems pending layouts etc. I will run a couple models for the Outdoor Water Use to see how little they can get away with to meet the prereq., we arent relying on any points for outdoor water.