When LEED EB certifying a hospital with multiple buildings that are all interconnected with tunnels, energy, water, one address, and waste, operating as one building. Would it be necessary to sub meter and monitor each building or because of the interconnectedness could it be classified under a single project?
Thanks
Susan Walter
HDRLEEDuser Expert
1296 thumbs up
July 1, 2013 - 4:41 pm
Tricky question. Hospitals are often in a gray zone when it comes to the one building definition as your question points out. The GBCI is aware that hospitals typically only have one address that covers multiple buildings. Don't sweat that 'test'. What does your owner want you to do with the EB+OM? Is there any renovation associated with this?
If your hospital is small or is relatively new, you can probably do the entire campus under one project. But that isn't typical in my experience. Personally, I wouldn't EB+OM the entire campus as one building or project. There are percent thresholds for earning credits in EB+OM that you won't make without breaking down the buildings, especially if they aren't fully up on EPP protocols or have an active green team. Second, your owner's facility manager likely manages and monitors these buildings individually (or probably should operationally). It makes sense to submeter to some degree. But it can also be difficult to determine building boundaries, especially at lower levels. My advice would be to open an dialog with the GBCI on the boundary issue.
Brendan Molony
July 2, 2013 - 8:17 am
Thank you, for the advice. I will start to open a conversation with the GBCI and determine what steps that would be necessary to move forward with our project.
Brendan Molony
July 2, 2013 - 3:24 pm
As of right now there are no plans for any renovations. In the past we have renovated one building that we tracked to see how many LEED points we could get but because we are so integrated it was not possible to fully certify. Our goal is to certify as many buildings as possible without large amounts of construction or capital.