This is great news-and it adds to the transparency of who GBCI is. It helps to know our colleagues will be answering some of the most challenging technical questions. In my "contact us" emails to GBCI, I have always prefaced the questions by stating in all caps: "Please forward to our review team / technical staff." If you don't do that, you get a reply using the infuriating and non-responsive "stock language." It does eventually get to the skilled experts and we've had good communication after that. Also, I must admit that I don't spend a lot...

Am working with a project on LEED NC version 2009 which is located in Melaka, Malaysia.......... I have a doubt in species factor for Axonopus compressus.... Whether i can consider Cow grass (Axonopus compressus) as zero species factor? Or kindly help me to find the species factor for Axonopus compressus............... WEc1 ...

for this point given that we are using a lot of base building systems. Thank You! EAc1.3 ...

I call dibs on the Bahamas and Maldives!:) I'm surprised the Maldives haven't documented LEED compliance for any buildings they are very eco-friendly. It's interesting that some municipalities/countries may feel they are "beyond" LEED requirements and completing the documentation would not add a lot of value to their project. ...

Hi all, We are working on a master site project with three single buildings in the block. Two office buildings are pursuing LEED CS and one hotel building is pursuing LEED NC. They share the same parking lot, but it might be divided for three buildings according to the designer. As the requirement in SSc4.4, the hotel building will need 5% preferred parking for carpools/vanpools. But we want to attempt this credit as a campus credit. So how many preferred parking spaces do we need, 5% of hotel parking or 5% of total parking spaces? ...

I am working on a LEED-CS 2009 project that is half office and half lab space. Not all of the tenants are certain yet so we opted to select the 'default occupancy' option. I noticed that this option includes zero transients, and I cannot manually change it since it is default. This concerns me because we need to estimate transients in our water calculations for WEp1 and WEc3. I think it is going to be a problem that transient counts do not line up between PIf3 and WEp1, though I am nnot sure how to address this issue. I could leave the transient count as zero in the WE credits to reflect...

as we move to v2009 and finally to v4. Our initial work while not surprising, is enlightening. We will have a lot of work to do to “recover” the energy savings that many projects have been able...

(Credit 4.1 states: 'Design the lot such that at least 70% of the buildable land; not including area under roof, is permeable or designed to capture water runoff for infiltration on site.') Is there a minimum percentage of the total site area that must be considered a "buildable" land area for the permeable lot? Also, what is the definition of a 'steep' slope for permanent erosion control? Thank you. LEED ...

For those of you working with zero lot line buildings: we have seen the reviews vary in the past pertaining to documentation submittals. We have decided to clarify this by using an "unofficial" ruling via email correspondence w/ GBCI. "For zero lot line buildings, smoking must be prohibited on the property that is under the building/management control, and the building should still have signage indicating that smoking is prohibited within 25 feet of entries. The rule is not required to be enforced on public sidewalks that are not under the building/management control,...

Hi all, I have an inquiry in the sustainable sites category. in 1. site stewardship, point d "build on a lot of 1/7 acre or less, or 7 units per acre" what does "lot" mean? does it mean the zone lot size or the net project area or the gross floor area? and in 6. Compact Development, what does the buildable area mean? Thank you very much LEED ...