Legal to cite LEED credits if not pursuing certification?

Maria, the city of Boston requires projects of a certain size to be LEED “certifiable” so most projects don’t actually get certified. The city has their own internal review dept that reviews what is essentially documentation the same as what you would upload to LEEDOnline. We do many projects that need to meet this goal and the specs include LEED requirements. Those projects also sometimes have additional sustainability goals in the spec. _______________________________________ Katherine Bubriski, AIA LEED AP BD+C, Fitwel Ambassador Director of Sustainability & Building Performance 617.666.7006 Direct Arrowstreet 10 Post Office Square Suite 700N Boston MA 02109 _______________________________________ www.arrowstreet.com Follow us on Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn From:

I'm in Washington state and we have a number of clients who state construction should be to "LEED standards" and there's never been an issue.  Additionally, I've seen a number of projects where design is to LEED standards, and everyone moves forward with the intention of getting the project certified, but then the client changes their mind about full certification.

There is no legal implication that I know of for using any rating system or framework for goal setting on a project not pursuing full certification.  Depending on the GC/CM contract type (lump sum vs. GMP) if the fees are already set and the contractor didn't capture the scope they are probably looking for an out if they don't have a means of increasing GC's/GR's at this point because it is obviously extra work. I would be happy to review your sustainable design specs and let you know what I think.  A big sympathy I have to this builder is that most often the sustainable design requirements are cut and pasted from previous jobs and include every potential LEED construction strategy a project could pursue, oftentimes even when those strategies are not represented in the scorecard.  A common example is flush-out and air testing requirements.  So, it can become even more difficult sometimes to read between the lines and know what a project actually wants if there is no scorecard present.   To that end, I would hope that whatever strategies you have identified in your 01 81 13 are as specific as possible and particular to your project.  Further, if you have names of actual strategies / credits / optimizations from multiple rating systems that themselves have multiple paths or thresholds I would urge you to identify in your specs which paths and thresholds are expected and spell it out for the builder. Mostly I would recommend talking collaboratively with the owner and the builder at this point and collectively deciding what are the best strategies for the project, defining what that means for the scope, and making any necessary budget adjustments based on that conversation.  Especially when a project is not pursuing certification or subject to green building code requirements I think an additional notice to the builder of the expected extra effort for sustainability requirements should be called to their attention as early as possible before final contract amounts are set.  I don't know, maybe putting a note somewhere on the drawing set would help call attention to the elevated emphasis on SDR's if you aren't talking with your builder prior to finishing CD's.   I would not say that your situation is a common issue for us personally since we are often involved and pre-con and generally know what we are getting into, but it can be frustrating in the few instances where it does happen and the team is unwilling to talk through revised options.  I think the "you bid it, you buy it and it's in the specs so you own it" mentality (not implying this is at all your position) isn't very productive on projects not pursuing certification (if it is pursuing certification they should know better) and there are often better ways to collectively get to the goals you want .  Then again, some people suck and don't want to do anything sustainable so they need the whip cracked!  Good luck

I don't think it would be a problem if the language is clear that LEED and other rating systems are being used to describe the performance requirements without pursuing certification. And as long as they don't make any marketing claims of "built to LEED" or similar statements it's hard to see how USGBC would have any objection. If the project is doing Commissioning, there's also the Owner's Project Requirements document, which can be a useful place to clarify those requirements. That raises an interesting question - what if the OPR differs from the construction documents? Humm... "Send Lawyers, Guns and Money..."  

  There might not currently be any negative implications but I have heard that discouraging the “certifiable” project types will me more of a focus for USGBC going forward.  That said, we have one of these in design  and will be going about it the standard way for now...