Non-LEED TI in a LEED Core+Shell Building

Vikram, yes, there are most likely tenant guidelines that were written that you are likely or will likely be asked to follow. Your only obligation (and only to the extent that the landlord makes this clear to you) is to follow those guidelines, which don't typically require LEED certification. Just curious, has anyone ever heard of a LEED-CS project losing its plaque over a TI project not following tenant guidelines? I haven't. I suppose, though, that in the world of Arc we're entering, USGBC could find a way to do this via some measure of ongoing performance.

I am not aware of a CS project losing its certification (but of course there's a lot I'm not aware of), but my sense is that tenants are not required to meet the recommendations of the Tenant Guidelines, only required to meet any Tenant Lease / Sales Agreement requirements that the core and shell used to help them get their certification.  For example, we are working on a project where the owner of the core and shell has put in place a LPD limit on the tenants, and is pursuing LEED CS based on those lighting power densities.  I imagine that if the tenants move in and ignore those limits it could cause questions back to the owner.

I have worked on projects both where we have issued the guidelines and where we have received them as a part of our fitout. As of v3 and v4 TI guidelines are supposed to be mandatory (compared to prior versions of LEED) however I don’t think the USGBC follows up. Starting in v3 the USGBC/GBCI started asking for Tenant Signed Lease Agreements (TSLA; or draft lease language if signed lease is not available) that includes these guidelines. The guidelines include LPD, energy, water, IAW, CWM, IAQ, etc. criteria consistent with the CS certification. It’s required to have these guidelines (TSLA) to get full credit for many of the points in LEED CS these days (which I call “scope creep” for a core and shell but hey, that’s just my opinion). In general, if you are issuing these guidelines you should convey to the Owner they are intended to be mandatory. If you are fitting out space in a LEED CS building, if it is under v2 you may consider it a recommendation, but if the CS is under v3 or v4 you should consider it mandatory. Thank you, Anica ANICA LANDRENEAU Associate AIA, LEED® AP BD+C, WELL AP, BREEAM Senior Principal | Director of Sustainable Design HOK anica.landreneau@hok.com t +1 202 944 1490 m +1 202 250 1779 Canal House, 3223 Grace Street, N.W. | Washington, DC 20007 US hok.com | connect From: Jona

I think there’s a distinction between the Tenant Design and Construction Guidelines under CS – this is to have the design team for CS give the future tenants guidance on how they may certify the tenant spaces, and TSLA, which is where the CS project is counting on tenant activities to help the CS certification effort. For our recent CS project, we undertook both – we gave a TSLA for lighting, but for the rest of the credits we did not incorporate that, and our CS certification used baseline assumptions for those other aspects of the tenant spaces. We also put together a Tenant Guidelines document for how the tenants might follow and achieve LEED CI. I don’t believe there is any requirement than any of the tenants even pursue LEED, let alone which credits they need to follow to achieve LEED. I can understand the logic of requiring a TSLA if for key performance strategies that the core and shell is counting on, but I would be interested to see where the Tenant Guidelines are mandatory for tenants. Our recent project experience was very enlightening (no pun intended), because this was a challenging developer client in general, but one of their managers evaluated some of their similar buildings and noted that they are typically at about 0.6 W/SF connected, so we made the case that a 0.7 or 0.8 W/SF limit in a TSLA would help right-size the core and shell systems and show realistic energy savings on the CS energy model without putting an egregious limit on potential tenants – they can use the data and show potential tenants in-place solutions that meet the TSLA limits. Data rules! From: Ani

I would agree with you philosophically about the distinction between TI Guidelines and the TSLA (or draft lease language), but find the line is increasingly blurred by GBCI. On the base building side there’s very little we can get away with ‘recommending’ and very much we seem to need to be ‘requiring’ in order to achieve our credits. I have been pushing back on this since v3 projects started to go through design reviews. I think it should mostly be voluntary since whole building certification is covered by NC. I can see if the base building installs no water fixtures why it would be necessary to require certain flow rates to achieve credits under CS for water efficiency, but we’re asked to provide requirements for all sorts of things that go way beyond CS scope. I do concur that there is no actual LEED certification requirement for TI unless the base building developer chooses to make that a condition of their lease. Thank you, Anica ANICA LANDRENEAU Associate AIA, LEED® AP BD+C, WELL AP, BREEAM Senior Principal | Director of Sustainable Design HOK anica.landreneau@hok.com t +1 202 944 1490 m +1 202 250 1779 Canal House, 3223 Grace Street, N.W. | Washington, DC 20007 US hok.com | connect From: Jonath

TI guidelines are an optional credit in CS. If the CS project pursued that credit, then I would have the tenant follow the guidelines because they should be a lease requirement. If they didn't pursue that credit, then tenants aren't obligated to do anything. I've worked on an NC project in the past that included some future tenant fit-outs. In that case tenant guidelines were required to keep the integrity of the NC certification. Michelle Michelle Halle Stern, AIA, PE, WELL AP, LEED Fellow mhs@thegreenfacilitator.com | 773.914.3036 www.thegreenfacilitator.com