Move bullet number 3 before bullet number 2 and renumber accordingly.
Add the following text at the beginning of the “Creating the Baseline Building”:
"The baseline building design shall be a design that exhibits industry-standard materials and practices for a building that meets the functional requirements of the project. The actual design should demonstrate a design that deviates from those industry-standard materials and practices – for example, the use of lower-impact materials or dematerialization, or a system not commonly used in that application.
The baseline building design can be derived in a variety of ways. Regardless of the approach, care should be taken to ensure that the baseline and actual designs are functionally equivalent. Four basic options for creating the baseline design are as follows.
• Early design: an early design for the building under study. Documentation should include the draft plans and any modifications necessary to ensure functional equivalence.
• Existing building: a real-world benchmark. Documentation should include the as-built plans and any modifications necessary to ensure functional equivalence.
• Building archetype: similar to an existing building, but is a designed-but-unconstructed building. Documentation should include the draft plans and any modifications necessary to ensure functional equivalence.
• Alternative design: A design that is based on the actual design, but is more reflective of industry-standard material and practices. Documentation should include a description of where the alternative design differs from the actual design with justifications as appropriate. Justifications can be in the form of product-specific EPDs compared against industry-average EPDs; other justifications can be used as needed.
Creating the baseline building using an early design for the building (Option #1 above) is recommended. Using LCA tools in the early design phase allows teams to more easily identify material impacts reduction strategies and document their LCA modeling work for this credit. Below is a stepwise approach to creating and refining the baseline building in early design."