MRc2 100% diversions

Hi Michelle

It's our first time appealing as well. That's why we are feeling a little insecure about the procedure.

I've read the Appeal Policy, and they mention such things as "First Level Appeal" and "Final Level Appeal", which just made me more confused....and plus, and this goes on "appeal as a challenge to GBCI Determination" and Appeal to pursue new credits". These last ones I understood, I think we fit on the 1st case, since we disagree with the decision.

Here's the review comment:
"(...) However, a 100% diversion rate is above typical industry best practices since there are usually product containers, small scraps, and debris that are not recyclable. Please provide a narrative explaining how miscellaneous materials such as those listed above were diverted from landfill."

As I mentioned in the other post, they even recycled the wraping paper of all materials that arrives in the construction site. To respond to this "however" in the preliminar review we submitted: 1) all the waste haul receipts, 2) letter signed by the general contractor explaining all the actions taken to achieve 100%, 3) spreadsheet showing the monitoring of all waste generated over the entire construction period.

Don't know what else can we say to prove...

No Michelle, it's written "denied", I've double checked. This review coment I posted above is the last one we got, from the preliminary review application report. I looked but couldn't find an updated report available between final decision and acceptance of final decision. For our other projects, I could easily access the report imediatelly after acceptance of deicision. But since this one is "in between" decision/acceptance of decision I didn't see any report avaliable...

So folks, in order for us to proceed with the appeal process, do you see any other type of documentation that we could use to retrieve these 3 points? It's okay for us to keep it between 95%<100%. I just wonder how we would "unsay" what it's already said...since we've already said, two times (1sr in the original submission and 2nd in response to the review comments), we diverted a 100%, how can we go about to say now that we diverted less than this without seeming that we are saying it just to gain these 3 points?

Thanks for the invite, we would love to engage our team in working on a case study with you! Tristan, guess the link you sent with your contact is broken, would you mind sending it again?

Thanks!

Hi Michelle! I'm so glad you mentioned the Review Comment link on the credit informaiton page I haven't clicked there. Just found out that there was a misinterpretation somewhere along the way. For some reason, they though we sent waste for incineration and didn't inform how much! No idea where they got that from...I wonder if was a language thing since we submitted in portuguese. Oh wow, that makes it even more unfair...now the client will have to pay for it in order to appeal. And the worst thing is that the 2nd comment is completely diferent from the 1st comment, which states the 'problem' is proving the 100%. In the second comment the problem turns out to be incineration. Crazy! Comments from the second review below. What's the best way to respond to that?

"However, as stated in LEED Interpretation #3004, #2141, and #10138, and based on the credit intent, incineration of construction waste materials cannot be used as an alternative for diverting waste from the landfill. The credit intent states, "Divert construction and demolition debris from disposal in landfills and incineration facilities." From the documentation provided, it is not clear of the amount diverted from landfill what amount of waste had not been sent to incineration facilities. Therefore it is not possible to determine the total percentage of construction waste actually diverted from landfill as defined and outlined by the LEED Building Design and Construction Reference Guide 2009 Edition."

Thanks for showing me this oportunity! I use the GBCI contact page often, but didn't know there was a chance of questioning the final review and even get the appeal fee waived.
My only concern is about the deadlines they are giving for response. We no longer have this kind of time to wait for GBCI's answer. The appeal has to be submitted 25 business days after the final review righ? Is it possible to request an extension for the appeal period? Who should I ask this extension for? GBCI? My review team??

Michelle Reott and Michelle Rosenberger: I just can't tell how helpful you have been to our case! I already sent a request under "Questions on review comments" in GBCI Contact us page. I informed them about the new information provided in the final review about incineration and my concerns about the deadline. I told them which date the final report was published and what was our deadline. I also informed that the documentation was sent in portuguese and that was no claim at all for incineration as an alternative diversion method. Just to make sure we would be fine, I called GBCI and asked for an extension over the phone, asking them 25 more business days and a confirmation email with the new deadlines, so if anything happens, we can prove we are covered. They already sent the confirmation email, end of March 31st is our new deadline.

M. Reott - the Project ID# is 100002268 Borg Warner Itatiba Master Site. And the final report on a dependent block Project (P10 Entrada Borg Warner Brasil ID#1000022629) was already published and the MRc2 + exemplar performance is showing as denied as well. Thank you so much for your intervention, look forward any feedback!

M. Rosenberger - we haven't handed any money yet, and now we are under the new deadline, as GBCI confirmed to us by email. So we have a little more time to deal with it and get the best solution!

Than you all!!

Hi Samuel, thanks for your input. Yes, you are right, there was waste that was not economically feasible to send for recycling, such as styrofoam and gipsum, which don't weight much but have big volume. But even those were sent for recycling, despite the higehr cost. Over the course of the Project the construction company posed as a challenge to itself to achieve 100% diversion goal. That definitely helped them in building a reputation on the local Market. From their perspective, this Project was kind a pilot project as far as waste management.
We are trying to get in touch with the GBCI to get this resolved because the major issue now is that the review team, in the final report, stated that we claimed incineration as an alternate method of diversion, but we never claimed that.

Hi Michelle, I already re-sent the question to GBCI because the first answer we received from them was not conclusive. They only agreed to give us the extension, but made no comments on the main issue.

At this point we are not even worried about the 100% anymore, but we also do not want it to be all or nothing. Was a very hard work to settle for 0% diversion. So we are ok with desconsidering some of the residues and claiming a percentage 95%<100%. But we still believe there is a way to do that without having to pay for an appeal, since we never claimed incineration as a diversion method and that point was never mentioned by the reviewers until the final report.

Regarding your point about bringing up new issues though, in our case, they did not bring up this new issue as a FYI. They brought it up as the reason why the project were not awarded the points. This is questionable, right? We don't want this situation to incur in any unecessary fees to our client.

No problem about the misspelling Michelle! Our team appreciate all the inputs. We will keep you folks up to that on that issue so we can all learn.

Thanks

Dear all,

I'm happy to announce that our request to GBCI under 'contact us' tool had a positive outcome! They asked the review team to double check the analysis of MRc2 and its exemplary performance. The review team apologized for the mistake and granted the 3 points. No need to appeal! The master site final report and the P10 (building) final report were already updated.

I just want to thank you all for your precious insights, we would never be able to achieve that result without your help. Our facility is now LEED Silver, superseeding the original expectations of a basic certification!

Muito obrigado!!!

Yes Michelle!

I have one last silly question: since we thought we would have to make an appeal, we had clicked the "enter appeal stage" button on the overview tab in LEED online. And now that no appeal will be necessary, what is the procedure? I can just click the "cancel appeal" button and it will go back to the previous screen that says "proceed to post-certification"?