Proposed building HVAC system (ASHRAE 90.1 (2010) Table G3.1.10.b)

You cannot get there through a tenant agreement since you must have an actual signed lease now to claim the savings. Actual completed design for an actual tenant is required. This is trying to prevent CS and CI projects from claiming the same savings for different scopes of work. A CS project is intended to capture CS savings not tenant improvement savings. So short of signed lease agreeemnts and atual space designs I am not sure how you would get there.

This seems like an impossible situation. The signed lease requirement is difficult enough on a large building which will have many tenants, and typically won't be totaly leased out for a year or two. To get plans from each of those would take years after substantial completion of the CS building, long after there is anyone from the original team engaged. In addition, many tenants, especially in corporate retail, will not release that info on principle. 

I think this is the whole point. There are differences between a CS, CI and NC scope of work and this requirement is just getting at the differences and not allowing savings to count across multiple scopes of work. 

Hey Glen,

I feel your pain. I was in your situation several years ago. You may have seen my post on this forum describing a similar CS situation.

I learned about the signed tenant lease agreement requirement during my initial LEED review of my modeling. I originally submitted a copy of the owner's tenant guidelines and that was rejected by the LEED reviewer at the time. I did end up having to submit 10 separate signed tenant lease agreements with various sensitive corporate parts blacked out in my LEED resubmission. 

As a result, there was a 2-3 year gap in time between my initial energy modeling review and my resubmission as I waited for the building tenants to populate the building. I actually resubmitted during the Construction Phase of the LEED process instead of during the Design Phase when I did my initial modeling submission. Therefore, I actually got assigned a different LEED reviewer between my submissions.

Here are takeaways I learned that will hopefully make a difficult situation easier.

• Make sure your design requirements end up in the signed tenant lease agreement and I would highlight those requirements to the LEED reviewer so they can find it quickly in every single tenant lease agreement document. It is a pain, but if it saves you an LEED appeal (which costs extra money) with the reviewer, it is well worth the time.
• Document the LEED reviewer comments and directions given to you so if you have a mult-year wait you have solid references to come back to (I had an argument with the 2nd LEED reviewer about the modeling direction they gave me as it was in conflicit with the direction given to me by the 1st LEED reviewer. The 2nd reviewer meant well but they were trying to turn a CS project into a NC project. You could say I ended up winning that argument because I had the documentation to back me up)

In the end, it is all water under the bridge for me now. I was finally able to get the building in question certified but it took a long time (4 years on the LEED certification in my case). If I were you, I would work to start setting expectations with your team and the owner now given this situation.

I hope this helps.