Quick to defend

I know we've put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into LEED, and people are quick to defend the home team when attacked. But a lot of the criticism is justified. The documentation is too expensive. We've had many debates about this topic on this forum. There seems to be a mentality that the more we suffer thru paperwork the better the building will perform. That's not true. The buildings should perform. Apple is beloved by millions because it performs and it's intuitive to use. LEED's defense is that we're better than we were. That is irrelavent. I won't buy an iPad if it's buggy and incomplete, regardless if the salesperson says how much better it is over the last version. How well does LEED (the product) perform today? USGBC had the opportunity to tie LEED-NC with energy performance in v2009 and v4. Many of us pleaded that this change be made because modeling is inaccurate. Just requiring a building to provide 5 years of data to USGBC doesn't improve their performance over baseline. (By the way, when will USGBC publish this data as averages so we can see how well new LEED buildings perform against other new construction?) I've never liked the ease of gaining some points. Most buildings I've done could earn LEED-Silver without much change in building design. The midwest always got all of the regional credits. Now the regional credit allows trans ocean shipments. Claiming recycled credit for steel structure was odd because the steel isn't any different than every other building. Using low flow fixtures which are Code in many areas. Or a single bulkhead made out of wood that is the only wood on the project just to gain the FSC point. The Palazzo gamed the system. They got smoking allowed into a LEED building. While most of us are being forced to add signs outside of each entrance restricting smoking, the Palazzo guests & staff walk thru smokey gaming floors to access LEED portions of the building. I just hope this article is a vehicle for improvement in LEED. Otherwise someone has a great opportunity to start a competative product that is willing to put its proof in the pudding.