Our client is considering pursuing new credits during the appeal of our final construction review. If the credits require additional construction work-does the work have to be finished by the time we submit for appeal? Is it enough to have a signed contract between the customer and the people doing the work?

I am a LEED AP and a “newcomer” in the certification process. As AGMBC Guidelines are not clear to me, I went through the forum comments below but I am totally confused now. Please help with the following:

My project consists of a site boundary that is separated in two areas through the crossing of a public road. Area 1 comprises the main building which is an assembly & testing plant including office area as well as the utility tanks. Area 2 consists of parking spaces & shuttle bus parking, two dormitory buildings for the workers and one separate cafeteria building that also will host some public services. The client wants to have LEED certification for the entire project site as outlined in the AGMBC Guide “Group Project Certification”.

Questions:
- Can Group Project Certification be followed at the moment or do I have to wait until the LEEDonline functionality is released?
- Will the separation of the site area by the public road pose a problem for the certification?
- As far as I understand the USGBC fee table and the comments below, for registration the fee will be US$ 1,200 for each building, but certification fee will be the same for the group as for single certification.
- If Group Project Certification cannot be used by now, is it possible to certify only the main assembly & test plant building on area 1? How can I consider then parking area and public services on area 2?

I tried to register project using the BLOCK. How shall i remove the TEST building project from the block? As the cost of that building is also included when I click payment.
It shows the id of
1. Test Building (this was just created to test the process of registration, not real building)
2. MAstersite
3. Project Building 1
4. Project building 2
Now instead of $2700 it shows me the additional+ $900 because of test master site i created. Is there any way i can remove it as i do not wish to start going through the entire process again
Thank you

Hello, I have a question about how sidewalk is defined.

We have a sidewalk along the street edge of a park, and the park has a playground in it. The City has requested that we provide a fence between the roadway and the sidewalk for safety reasons. So the configuration would be: roadway, curb, fence (in landscaped area), sidewalk, park. The sidewalk would still be continuous to the rest of the sidewalks, one would just not be able to get to the sidewalk from the roadway for the part adjacent to the park.

The description in the LEED reference guide notes that protection of the pedestrian area is encouraged, I just want to make sure fencing it off won't discount this section from our sidewalk calculations.

I hope that is clear,
Thanks
Tyler

I'm on the hotel NC project and we are under discussion that how to determine FTE number. If there is no certain number of FTE, can we use CS appendix 1 to determine FTE?

We just received our comments back for our first (preliminary) construction review. It seems we have the points for certification and want to streamline the process as we are NOT anticipating having enough points to get to Silver.

One of the 'pending' pre-req/point was for EAp2/EAc1, in which there were several comments about our energy model (we used Option 1). Are we able to change our EAp2 to Option 3 Advanced Buildings Core Performance and move forward with a Streamlined Path by providing the Mechanical PE, Electrical PE and Architectural RA license information? We would then NOT get any points for EAc1, which is fine.

I just wanted to make sure that we can change in the middle of the construction review. We have reviewed the Advanced Buildings Core Performance documents and met the requirements.

Thanks for your help!

Hello LEEDuser.com community,
My name is Pearl Frank. I am the Project Leader of a LEED EB Certification project on an existing campus building at Purdue University. My team and I are attempting to conduct the three EPA I-BEAM audits; Indoor Spaces, HVAC Systems, and Building Exteriors to satisfy the requirements for IEQ Credit 1.1
Since we are undergraduates and do not specialize in this area, my team and I are experiencing difficulty defining the proper protocol for judging the conditions of the various parameters on the audit forms' checklists. Neither specific guidelines nor procedures to follow are given. Since the checklists are quite extensive in terms of varying parameters, I imagine the protocols for gauging conditions require knowledge from multiple disciplines.
To provide an example of the type of question I am asking, the Indoor Spaces Audit asks the following three questions on the parameter "Air Flow" (found on page 1):
Supply flow adequate (smoke pencil)?
Return flow adequate (smoke pencil)?
Exhaust flow adequate (smoke pencil)?
We have a smoke pencil to test air flow, but the question is what protocol do we use to determine whether the condition is adequate or not? This question of protocol determination applies to most of the parameters on all three of the audits. Will someone please help us find a way to appropriately judge whether a condition is "ok" or "not ok" on the various Audit parameters? My team members and I are eager for a response based on the professional expertise that's offered through leeduser.com I appreciate any time taken to read and respond to my request. Thank you.

We are in a unique situation where our client requires deductive alternates that total 20% of the project and a minimum of a LEED Silver certification.

We would like to do a split design and construction review in order to ensure the reviewers agree that we are meeting the intent of the design LEED credits. We tried to create deductive alternates that would have minimal to no implications on some of our major credits. But due to unforeseen conditions we have deductive alternates that vary from material substitutions to a reduction in the building footprint.

Therefore my question is can we submit two versions of the credit for the design review, one for the base bid and one for the deductive alternate?

If so my plan was going to be to document the base bid using the LEED template and upload a summary and back up data that shows compliance for the deductive alternate. Or is there a specific way LEED wants us to document the deductive alternate?

I have read too much! More confused now.
I am working on a university campus. We have 2 sets, of 3-4 unconnected buildings (housing) with very similar floor plans that are basically side by side and on the same site. From what I can gather, we can register each building (total of 7-8) individually under a block, but I keep missing the information on whether I can 'group' each set of similar buildings into 2 project group registrations? So instead of 7-8 individual registrations, just register 2 groups since each 'set' of buildings are same function, almost identical floor plans. Can I register these as two building groups under 2009? They will all be achieving NC certification? Please help- these are all under one architect, one contractor, one contractor being built at the same time. Thank you!

I can see that group certification (AGMBC Part II) is now available. However, a note on the USGBC website mentions:

"Until functionality is available in LEED Online to certify group projects, please note that all buildings must be registered individually. "

So for a group project consisting of 5 buildings, we will have to pay individual registration / submission fees for each building. Will this always be the case or will USGBC in due time request only one project registration / submittal fee for the whole group?

Makes a big difference, especially for small projects where each of the buildings is less than 50.000 ft2 and needs to pay the flat fee, compared to the case where the aggregate project would be required to pay fees based on ft2. Additionally, the registration fee gets multipled many times.

Thanks for all replies.