I am hoping that I can get some advice on the following scenario:
There is a campus of multi family residential housing buildings (say 5 for calculations sake), all owned by the same Property Manager, and there is an Administrative office for the Property Manager in 1 of the 5 buildings. This Adminstrative office makes all the purchases for the 5 buildings, and is the only physical space where things like ongoing consumables, furniture, food, etc are purchased and controlled by the Property Manager, since these items are associated with office usage.
Would it be feasible to allocate a percentage of these types of office purchases to each of the 5 buildings (i.e. 20% of the purchase value for each building or some percentage based on square footage of each building) for LEED EB documentation purposes? Or would it only fly if you use the office space purchases for the LEED documentation of the 1 building the office resides in (i.e. the other 4 buildings would not be able to claim any portion of these purchases because the office is physically outside of the LEED boundary for each of the 4 buildings)?
It seems strange that in a campus setting, you wouldn't be able to somehow get credit for office purchases made by the admin office (which serves all the buildings on the campus), but this is the idea we have gotten from all the LEED language we have seen to date.
Thanks for your feedback on this.
Jason Franken
Sustainability ProfessionalLEEDuser Expert
608 thumbs up
January 10, 2011 - 9:47 am
This is a good question, Jessica. The guidelines for campus scenarios are a little confusing. However, you should proceed with the assumption that you will only be able to claim a purchase if it is intended for use at a specific project building. If you have a portfolio of buildings on a campus that are all seeking certification, there are some credits and prerequisites for which you will be allowed to demonstrate campus-wide compliance. However, all of the purchasing credits (including IEQc3.3) will require that you illustrate compliance at the level of each individual building. So, in your case, where there is a centralized purchasing office, this is how you should approach this:
1) If the admin office buys something in bulk that is then actually used at each of the buildings on the campus, you can divide up that purchase using some type of pro-rated approach. For example, let's say each building has a common area with a coffee maker and one of the perks of living there is that the property manager provides free coffee to tenants. If the admin office bought $500 worth of organic coffee during the performance period, each building could claim $100 worth of coffee.
2) If the admin office buys something that is specifically intended to be used only by personnel in that office, those purchases cannot be shared out across the campus. For example, let's say that the admin office has a number of printers and copiers, but none of the other buildings have any sort of common space that is intended for use as a business center for tenants or property management staff. If the admin office buys $500 worth of paper during the performance period, the only building that could claim that purchase is the building that actually houses the admin office.
Now, If the property manager offered another perk by installing a computer and printer in each building's lobby for free tenant use, the situation would be very different. In that alternate example, the $500 worth of paper that was purchased by the central admin office could be divided up across each of the buildings on the campus.
The key thing to remember is that the EBOM rating system is requiring you to:
a) document actual performance,
b) during the performance period,
c) inside your LEED project boundary.
The last part is the key item in a campus scenario; for the purposes of any purchasing credit, each building on the campus will have its own distinct LEED project boundary.
Jessica Jones
Project ConsultantSustainable Design Consulting
20 thumbs up
January 10, 2011 - 11:35 am
Jason,
Thanks for the response. I do have several follow up questions though as well as some issues with the interpretation of how LEED defines this issue (keeping in mind that there is little guidance from USGBC, and what little guidance there is tends to be confusing and often contradictory).
My first comment is that it seems with the interpretation you have listed that the intent of the purchasing credits is backwards. LEED is suppose to give credit to practices that are environmentally friendly. In this case, it appears that the way to achieve the LEED credits would be to start buying a set of products for each of the individual buildings (ex. coffee makers, printers, etc.). This seems contradictory, because buying these products is consuming more than is currently being used. Having individual products in each building means more energy usage, more natural resource usage, etc and would be somewhat wasteful. I feel we should be rewarded in the LEED system for efficient usage of materials and resources by centralizing all of these products in one office space. All of this is part of the issue I see with LEED rewarding projects for more purchases. It almost encourages consumption (which to me is one of the biggest problems facing our society today).
The next comment I have is that the USGBC has ruled that in a campus setting there are many credits that are able to be "shared" or credits can be achieved even though the physical objects or amenities aren't within the specific LEED boundary (such as parking spaces, showers, stormwater management, etc.). So why should purchasing be any different? This is an example of the contradiction within the LEED rating systems. I understand the intent of requiring things to be within the LEED boundary, but there are always exceptions, and in a campus setting, this is one case it seems unreasonable to require all purchases to be used within the LEED project boundary.
One example of a product that should count even if purchased outside the LEED boundary is office paper. The way I read your interpretation, it seems that unless the printer is housed in the building of the specific LEED project in reference, the paper purchases shouldn't count for LEED purposes. But just because the paper is printed in the office, doesn't mean that it isn't actually physically used in the other buildings. This paper is very frequently used for things like tenant notices, etc. within each of the buildings. So for these types of products it seems reasonable to allocate percentages to each building (even though the printer and office equipment is in only 1 building).
I realize that there is not much guidance for LEED EB for Multi Family at this point (as we have discovered throughout the certification process), but it would be nice to see some guidance, and guidance that is in line with the intent of LEED and consistent with other rating systems and interpretations. I realize that LEED EB is different in that it is actual performance during the performance period, but there should still be some consistency between EB and other LEED Rating Systems when appropriate.
I would appreciate your thoughts on my comments when you have a chance.
Thanks for your time.
Dan Ackerstein
PrincipalAckerstein Sustainability, LLC
LEEDuser Expert
819 thumbs up
January 11, 2011 - 10:54 am
Jessica - You've asked some great questions and in the process illuminated a number of issues that I know USGBC is also working on/struggling with right now. Your particular project is a neat intersection of two scenarios that challenge EBOM: residential and campus. Either one has a number of unknowns; in combination you are definitely out there on the cutting edge.
Jason's response is, in my eyes, spot on. He has helpfully illustrated the flexibility that the USGBC is trying to maintain to allow for variability in building situations that necessarily differ among campuses. I will try to address your follow up points:
1. On the issue of consumption, I think you'll find that everyone at USGBC is aligned with your concern about encouraging consumption. That being said, there is simply no functional way for this tool to measure a 'lack' of consumption. Past versions of EB attempted to encompass source reduction but it quickly became clear that a project could claim to have 'source reduced' tons of material with no documentation. The USGBC's reach can only encompass guiding existing purchasing; they have to assume that the profit motive will limit unnecessary purchases beyond what is required for normal operations.
2. USGBC's fundamental orientation is the certification of individual buildings. The rating systems were not designed for campuses, firms, etc... (LEED-ND being the obvious exception). For this reason, the default position of the USGBC is that data should represent building-level performance. When doing so is somehow inadequate, inaccurate, or misrepresentative of actual circumstances (irrigation, stormwater management, and similar credits being the obvious examples), the USGBC has made formal exception to that default position. I am of the opinion that this exception should be extended to additional credits in a campus setting, particularly alternative transportation and waste diversion. But until the USGBC formally agrees, reasonable people are left to happily debate which credits should or should not be considered campus-wide vs individual building, while knowing that the USGBC starting point is building-specific data. Purchasing is a tough one on both sides of this debate, but I hope its helpful to understand the USGBC's starting point, at least philosophically.
3. Finally, to your example, I would encourage you to assume that the USGBC is less interested in drawing hard & firm lines and more interested in behavior/performance consistent with the credit intent. You have a great deal of flexibility in explaining to the reviewer how purchased materials are used in the project building, and why that use is reasonable for inclusion. The USGBC can't anticipate every permutation of materials use that takes place in a campus environment - its incumbent on projects to help the USGBC understand their practices and how those practices are consistent with the credit intent. I don't think a reviewer would have any problem with the inclusion of some $ amount for paper to each building in the example you provide (as long as it wasn't double-counted between the two buildings!).
Hope that's at least a little helpful.
Dan