Hi I have a bit of a particular project here, let me explain.
We want to certify 5 office buildings under LEED v4 EBOM. After research we have thought that a Group Approach should work in our situation.
We are confident that 4 out of the 5 buildings will be eligible for certification. The fifth building is the main one, and it is a bit particular. It has 8 floors, where 6 of them are residential and 2 of them are office. Those 2 are the ground and first floors, and the later occupies the space of two floors as it has a mezzanine. The office space is what we want to certify. Also, the residential and the offices are completely separated; to access them there are different entrances and they are not connected through the inside by any stairs or lift.
Also, all of these 5 buildings are located close to each other but they are in public space (at the city centre of a metropolis). There is a river RIGHT by one of the buildings and a canal in between 2 and the other 3 buildings. So employees constantly walk over a bit of the canal/river to move from one building to another. By the way, there is no other green/natural space besides the river.
Now, my questions are:
1. Is that "particular" building still eligible for certification?
2. Should we include any public space inside the project boundary? If so, how do we allocate it to the buildings?
3. And, do we include the river/canal inside the boundary, if so, for which of the buildings?
Please, note that my questions are for buildings going for a Group Approach certification, i.e.: individually certified.
Many Thanks.
Christopher Davis
Sr. Sustainability Project ManagerCodeGreen Solutions
43 thumbs up
September 6, 2016 - 11:41 am
Julia, you'll definitely want to reach out to GBCI to confirm your approach before you start, but I can offer some thoughts:
1. LEED v4 MPRs don't have additional guidance to address these situations, but the LEED 2009 Supplemental Guidance may be of use, because the MPRs are in broad intent very similar between v2009 and v4. http://www.usgbc.org/sites/default/files/Docs10131.pdf
2. Are all five buildings commonly owned and managed? Group certification, which confers a single certification on the entire group, isn't really applicable to separately-managed buildings, given the common policies that would be documented across a group.
3. In general, closely-located but non-contiguous, commonly-owned land can be included in a single LEED project boundary as you've described. The public rights-of-way would just be excluded from the scope.
3. Multifamily residential buildings can definitely use LEED O+M, and there's a specific rating system adaptation for multifamily O+M. so you should consider certifying that. (Note that Group cert is only allowed for a single rating system version, so you couldn't include multifamily and office in a single Group.)
4. Is the residential portion condo or rental? If they're condo, you would likely be able to certify the office section independently leaning on the Vertically-Attached Buildings guidance on page 17 of the LEED 2009 MPR Supplemental Guidance.
5. If the residential portion is rental and commonly owned with the office, you won't be able to exclude it. If the rental portion is owned by a separate legal entity, then you could likely employ the Vertically-Attached Buildings guidance. Note that energy and water metering would need to be separate between them as well.
I hope that helps a bit. Again, you should definitely reach out to GBCI about this.