More Info on Program is Needed

Melissa. Contact Al Skodowski (allan.skodowski@transwestern.com). They are running several of the LDP's a pilots. He will provide you with lots of info.

As a LEED-EBOM consultant, I see the value in the LEED Dynamic Plaque. I have not been successful at convincing most of my clients to recertify after initial LEED-EBOM certification, and we work a lot with the Federal Government on these projects! GSA hasn't even decided if they want or need to recertify their EBOM projects nationally. The fact is not many companys have 0.5 to 2 FTEs on their staff willing and able to do the inside work of an EBOM or Recertification project so its a very hard sell and a very long process. If USGBC had not said that recertifications had to be in the latest version of LEED, there may have been a higher percentage that were willing to recertify but that ruling alone has limited recertifications. What I like about the Dynamic Plaque is its simplicity and its behavioral focus on doing the right things because everyone in the building can see where the low scores are. We would like to focus on how to help companies improve their scores. However, I'm a little conflicted as well because there isn't a whole lot for consultants to help with, so I'm wondering why I'm selling the LEED Dynamic Plaque to lots of people interested in the Colorado market. I think its because its the right thing to do. If I can sell 10 LEED Dynamic Plaques versus only 2 LEED EBOM projects a year, I think there will be a bigger environmental impact overall.

Renee, you raise some interesting points, however buildings only need to recertify in the version current at the time of registration. The best method we have found is to immediately register for recertification the day that GBCI informs you that the building has gained the initial certification. In most cases this will be in the same version that you just completed. Recertification is an interesting process. We have found the best method is to work closely with the client on a quarterly basis helping them maintain the initial certification and gathering the data for recert. So far we have an 80% recert rate with our clients by this method.
You are right to be concerned about your role. As you have had no input into the creation of LDP it will come as no surprise to learn that you have no role in Its sale or operation. The buildings team will need to email the tenants the surveys and upload the total results to GBCI. Certification of those results and the increase or decrease in LEED certification will be completed without your input.
This should then raise the important question in your mind...'where is the value in LDP'?
The value might be in the dumming down of the LEED EB process to the minimum possible components to a level that an intern in the building can complete the process....something that would allow the building to maintain he plaque at the cheapest possible cost...even if the certification level bares no relationship to the initial certification content. However I do agree that GSA could be a special case provided that the LDP has followed ANSI rules GSA should be able to soak up plenty of plaques.

1) It looks cool

2) You can only manage what you can measure and communicate to building occupants. This plaque is a lot cooler than an email saying "look at what our energy and water use was last month."

3) Different people care about different metrics and one size does not fit all. I think that will be part of the challenge. Awesome measurement tools aren't that useful if your analysis of the data is not valid. For example- some office building could have an awesome culture and lots of people bike to work from far away and then take a shower at the building. If that's just grouped into water consumption they might look "inefficient" compared to the same size office building where no one bikes to work. One metric for water efficiency isn't going to be valid for thousands of different building types. The building operators and occupants are still going to need to develpop their own specific set of metrics to measure their baseline performance and grade themselves as they strive to improve.

I'm all for sending out data in a visually stunning way to encourage behavior change. Kudos to the designers of the plaque. The plaque looks a lot cooler than an Energy Star plaque, for example. I think these are out of the price range of smaller buildings and will make more sense for large (>200,000 square foot) buildings.

In my opinion the water calculations from the LEED for New Construction forms are not going to be valid for hardly any occupied buildings. So I hope the LEED plaque algorithm corrects that and matches real-world occupant behavior better:)