Our project entails an existing Senior Housing and Care Campus in California consisting of 10 buildings.
Our client/owner/operator wants to achieve LEED Silver for 6 of the buildings which will be going through significant enough renovation that they will fall under LEED – NC rating. All the buildings are of similar construction type (Type V) wood frame. The other 4 buildings are going through minor cosmetic work and will not go for LEED certification at this time.
3 of the buildings are for Assisted Living Care, 2 will be for Memory Care and one is a Commons/Community function. Timing and phasing of construction will be driven by the important needs of continued and uninterrupted housing and care of the various groups of residents which will entail shifting them from building to building. This is a significant part of the logistics of keeping the campus operating smoothly during a little over 26 month construction period
We are looking to take full advantage of LEED AGMBC. The goal is to have all 6 buildings under a one Group Certification and thus share a single certification,.
Our primary question is whether or not a 3 year time period of completion of all buildings is allowable under one single certification even though obviously not all buildings will be under construction at the same time? As we read the AGMBC Application Guide of 10.31.2011, we see that all buildings “that comprise the group must be under the same construction contract and constructed at the same time.”
The 6 bldgs will be under the same construction contract - the question is how “constructed at the same time” is to be interpreted? - literally? Simultaneous construction of all 6 bldgs is simply not possible due the phasing required by housing and caring of the residents and this will mean one building at a time.
It seems that this project’s unique phasing is preventing our client from the advantage of the group approach and forcing them to go through the added effort of 6 separate registrations.
Any advice or direction would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Donald Green
Sr Project Manager / Operations ManagerProgressive AE
35 thumbs up
February 28, 2014 - 8:15 am
I would look at a Master Site so you can take advantage of the 20% discount on the review fees for each building. Yes you have to pay for the Master Site registration and Review fees, but if you do the math I think you will find that the 20% savings on the review fees for the buildings will far out weigh the Master Site cost, especially if any of the buildings are over 50,000 sf. You would also not have to deal with the phasing as once the Master Site is in place you can certify the other buildings as they are completed with no worries on a time line. The only catch is they all have to be the same LEED rating system: i.e. all v2009 NC which is sounds like they are.
It also sounds like, from your description, that the project buildings may not be a good fit for Group Certification as the Commons Building is not very similar to the other 2 building types. Group Certification wants all the buildings to be very similar.