Discrepancy material price from budget and actual cost

Charline - I'm not sure I am following your question. Do you mean you planned to use the 45% factor for total construction costs (aka budget method) but now you are using actual material cost for the denominator of the fraction used for MRc4? You can’t mix these - you have to use one or the other. If you use actual costs, you have to the actual cost of EVERY material in the affected Divisions and Sections and not just the cost of the materials that contribute to the MR credits.

For the numerator of the fraction for the MR credits, you need to always use the actual costs - not a budget value.

If this doesn’t help, re-post your question and I’ll help you further next week after the holiday weekend

Michelle - You appear to have omitted a verb in the comment above:
"If you use actual costs, you have to ................ the actual cost of EVERY material in the affected Divisions and Sections and not just the cost of the materials that contribute to the MR credits."
What did you mean to say?

Jon - You are correct. I left out the second "have." It should have read: "If you use actual costs, you have to HAVE the actual cost of EVERY material in the affected Divisions and Sections and not just the cost of the materials that contribute to the MR credits"

I need to add to this conversation because I too, like Charline, am running into trouble with reviewer comments on this issue since I tend to use the budget method for the total materials costs, then the contractor's actual submitted materials cost for the calculations. In which case my denominator is sometimes larger than my numerator.

For some context, I am working on projects in the middle east where typically the majority of construction products are imported and the labor costs are actually orders and magnitudes less than some of the products: because of no unions and day laborers that are very competitive on cost (aka cheap, relatively unskilled). My only option is to write a narrative to the reviewer stating that the default materials value used in the US, 45% for materials and 60% labor, does not apply in this region where it is more like 30% to 40% labor and 60% to 70% materials. Will this be enough? Any advice?

I have also worked on and successfully submitted a project which was using lots of high tech HVAC systems which caused this problem to be even more inflated. I wrote a narrative that explained that this new tech was "a risk" for all concerned, added a fear factor that significantly increased the cost by 2X the standard and required foreign expertise. This was enough to pass. Hope it will work again.

Amit and Charlene - I am still not sure what you mean by "budget" method for total material costs. Was my guess that you mean that you apply the 45% factor to total construction costs in the affected divisions and sections (see CSI below)? If so, you need to rethink your strategy. I have heard from both the USGBC Materials and Resources Subject Matter Expert (SME) and GBCI Materials and Resources SME who is a LEED Certification Reviewer. Both stated that USGBC has NOT approved an alternative default materials cost percentage. If using the default total materials cost method, project teams must use the 45% factor. Otherwise, projects should use the actual material costs if the 45% default does not represent the project’s material cost, whether it is because of labor or costly items. FYI: The numerator of these calculations can never be larger than the denominator.

Amit - I did want to note that HVAC equipment is never part of the calculations for MRc3-7. Please refer to Table 1 MR Credit Metrics in the Materials and Resources Overview (page 337 of the first edition of the LEED Reference Guide for Green Building Design and Construction). You are only dealing with materials identified in Construction Specification Institute (CSI) MasterFormat™ Divisions 03–10, 31 (Section 31.60.00 Foundations) and 32 (Sections 32.10.00 Paving, 32.30.00 Site Improvements, and 32.90.00 Planting).

Hi Michelle,
I did not add HVAC equipment to my MR credit calculation (nor Electrical, Plumbing etc.). My comment was in reference to the huge difference between the Overall Project Cost(reported in Plf2) and the Materials Budget Cost in the MR credits.

Thanks for your feedback.

If you do use Actual costs can someone tell me how we go about proving our number or do we have to? I am trying to find a way to get my subs to give me the actuals and I dont know in which format I should request this.