Our building is located on a college campus in a large metropolitan area 5 miles from the downtown core. The building houses the college of liberal arts and the administrative offices of the dean.
Is there any insight on the best strategy to use when conducting surveys for SSc4? Would the survey be administered to only full-time faculty, staff and PhD students? Would undergraduate students be classified as transients and therefore excluded from the count? Could a selection be included if the majority of the students walk to class but the full-time occupants are estimated to drive/not use alternative methods to commute?
Any feedback would be very helpful! Thank you!
American University
SustainabilityAmerican University
56 thumbs up
July 30, 2013 - 4:36 pm
It's my understanding that transient students with classes in the building can be excluded from the survey, however that approach might artificially worsen your score as administrators are probably more likely to drive than students using the building.
On our campus, we are attempting to document this credit by using a campus-wide survey of all students, faculty, staff, and then using the results across all buildings. So residence halls where 100% of students walk are averaged with the president's office where, say, 80% of people drive.
If you are able to identify all of the students in the building over a week, I think you could include them all or none but not a "selection" of them. I could see identifying them and surveying them as being difficult.
Hil Curtis
July 31, 2013 - 12:53 pm
Thank you Emily!
I agree that by excluding students our percentage of alternate commuters to the building would be reduced. Do you have any advice on the best way to survey students? Perhaps the in-person route would be best – but we would need to make sure to catch every student entering the building. Would students who do not want to participate (I’m thinking of those late to class, etc) be counted as single-occupant/conventionally fueled drivers? Alternately, for an electronic strategy, what if we asked all students entering the building (say, on one day) for their e-mail address and then followed up with a survey? I'm wondering if this would be representative of regular occupancy numbers.
Would your strategy of surveying the whole campus be acceptable for a single building on the campus undergoing certification or would the strategy only apply to a campus project? (The total student population on our campus is over 12,000.)
Lots of questions. Thanks again.
American University
SustainabilityAmerican University
56 thumbs up
August 2, 2013 - 4:48 pm
In person may be best, although there would be different students in the building on different days so you would have to capture everyone in the building during your survey week. Perhaps the registrar could give you emails of all the students with a class in the building over the course of the week. You would also have to filter out and exclude trips that those students aren't making since those days shouldn't be counted as an alternative commute.
You're correct that anyone you can't get to respond is counted as a conventional driver. If you're not confident that you can't get a majority of the students, your score may worsen anyway since you'll just have more non-responders to count as driving alone. Although the intent of including students seems better, you still may be better off just including regular occupants as suggested.
Take a look at the multi-building/campus guidance for more info about how to count campus-level initiatives at the building level. The commute survey isn't "pre-approved" so to speak as a campus approach, but I think it can make sense and we plan on doing a campus survey for our LEED Volume efforts. http://www.usgbc.org/Docs/Archive/General/Docs7987.pdf.
Happy to share our survey if you want to email me - curley@american.edu.
Sara Hendricks
Senior Research AssociateUSF Center for Urban Transportation Research
August 25, 2014 - 3:35 pm
Hello : May I have a copy of your LEED-EBOM commute survey? I saw your response to Hil Curtis who asked the best way to survey students. I think we would like to figure out a way to certify multiple projects under one project registration. That is Part II of the 2010 Application Guide for Multiple Buildings and On-Campus Building Projects. Do you know if Part II has been published yet? We have been doing a campuswide survey of students, staff and faculty.
Thank you.
Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11474 thumbs up
August 25, 2014 - 9:43 pm
Sara, see this page for more information on LEED campus guidance.