Hi All - we have a military base project in which the main building was planned from the beginning as a LEED project. Other buildings on this site are storage buildings & truck wash canopies. Now, since we do not want to gerrymander the site (cutting the storage buildings and canopies out but keeping the site intact) we thought maybe we should switch over to a group project. I have a couple of questions:
How do we address structures such as canopies - do they have to be treated as buildings, or are they considered hardscape, or???
In the AGMBC guide it says that buildings on a group project must be substantially similar. Since our main building consists of office spaces / mechanical shop spaces / etc. The storage buildings cannot really be considered as substantially similar. Does this disqualify this project as a multiple building project?
Any suggestions on whether this project should be mulit-building or whether the main building and site can be considered a single LEEd project, when the other buildings are situated on various portions of the site?
Any help would be appreciated - Thanks!
Teta
Hernando Miranda
OwnerSoltierra LLC
344 thumbs up
May 18, 2012 - 8:27 pm
Canopies should be non-roof unless they are carports. They are non-enclosed, non-conditioned elements.
Storage buildings are ancillary structures and could not be certified on their own. The MPRs would not be met.
It seems you have a single LEED project, not multiple buildings.
Teta Brown
Projects & Office CoordinatorTCF Architecture
10 thumbs up
May 21, 2012 - 11:41 am
Thank-you Hernando! So, does this mean that, in regards to the site portion of the project, we need to carve the LEED portion of the site up so it does not have any of the ancillary bldgs/roofed canopies on the LEED site?
Hernando Miranda
OwnerSoltierra LLC
344 thumbs up
May 21, 2012 - 12:55 pm
No, I would include them and provide an explanation.
In the past this wasn't necessary. These days the reviewers are being told to follow some review rules that don't necessarily allow for good judgement to take place.
The reason not to carve parts of the work out are:
- You have to split apart documentation with other credits, such as regional materials. This is a headache you don't want.
- You will get challenged for not having a reasonably contiguous LEED boundary.
One thing to understand is that these ancillary structures are of no real importance to the project being certified. The structures are necessary to the project function but whether they are included or carved out the impact on LEED is none, or should be none. Points are not added or lost.
A more complex example of a multi-building project type that gets certified as a single project is a multi-building urban K-12 school. The entire school is the "building." Simply because there are separate buildings; classrooms, library, administration, etc.; isn't enough to require separate LEED submittals.
I can tell you from experience, that older existing schools that were renovating some buildings would never pursue LEED if they were required to pay fees to certify each building separately. One of my clients was nearly forced to do this. What upset them most was that a similar renovated downtown school in a single large building would be allowed to certify as a single project but because they had separate small buildings they would have to pay a certification penalty.
The USGBC's LEED Department, the review rules developer, needs to add consideration for ancillary buildings, projects like schools, and also split floor renovations (e.g. 2nd and 5th floor only renovation) falling under LEED CI.
Teta Brown
Projects & Office CoordinatorTCF Architecture
10 thumbs up
May 21, 2012 - 1:07 pm
Thank-you for the detailed response - I understand - yay!