Part 2 goes after conflicts of interest

Nadav Malin

CEO

Green Commons, LLC

LEEDuser Expert

586 thumbs up

October 25, 2012

USA Today's attack on LEED continues. This time the target is conflicts of interest.

Is there a risk of conflicts of interest within LEED? Absolutely.

Does it ever actually happen? Perhaps, occassionally. But it's a rare exception in my experience, and hardly reason to trash the whole program. However, if this story causes USGBC to double down on its process for preventing such conflicts, that's not a bad thing.

If the story causes a lot of people to turn away from LEED, however, that would be a shame, because LEED has been huge driver in bringing the resources of the business community to the green building cause. Tom Frank seems to think that's a bad thing. I don't.

Frank also goes after business interests that influence government decisions (in this case, to offer tax credits for LEED). Is it news that businesses influence government policy in this country? Let's hope that many more of them do it in ways that promote green building and help protect the environment!

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Marcus Sheffer

LEED Fellow

7group / Energy Opportunities

LEEDuser Expert

4454 thumbs up

Thu, 10/25/2012 - 20:34

The main points in the first two articles – people who developed LEED made money on it and that there are portions of it that reward the status quo – are both fundamentally true. I agree that we should not be apologizing for making money given the motivations behind LEED. Getting v4 approved is the response to the second one.

Hernando Miranda

Owner

Soltierra LLC

LEEDuser Basic Member

231 thumbs up

Sun, 10/28/2012 - 18:28

Some people who developed LEED made a lot of money. Also, the people who developed the onerous LEED review process made a lot of money. As a LEED consultant, I made money from that process, but not a lot. I still drive an 8-year old car. I have almost no retirement, except what I can put aside myself. What the review process needs to be is one that helps projects get certified and maximize green going into buildings, and not into the pockets of certain consultants. I put together a "help them get certified" team of national experts in 2003 --including two LEED Technical Advisory Chairpersons-- with that as goal. But, the then USGBC VP, refused to allow the team to do review work even though we were rank the Number 1 team selected to do LEED reviews. Because the "help them get certified" method was "scary" to the existing process, there were a lot of external politics to keep the "prove it to me" review process in place. If LEED wants to reduce the negative news stories, like USA Today, as well as many others, it has to scrap the existing review process and go with a process that help projects. Helping projects get certified hasn't been what LEED is about for many, many years.