Your team must develop and adopt a facility maintenance and renovation (FMR) policy to achieve LEED certification, since this is a prerequisite policy. However, you only have to demonstrate actual compliance with the policy if you pursue the related credits. The policy covers three major areas: materials purchasing, waste management, and protecting indoor air quality during FMR activities.

The buildings best positioned to meet this credit are those whose utility or service provider has a demand-reduction program in place, and that have large systems that can be turned off during a demand-response event.

Buildings located in markets with an existing demand-response program are also the ones that will be most likely to benefit financially from pursuing this type of strategy, due to the high cost of electricity in these markets. Also, providers typically offer financial incentives beyond any reduction in peak-demand charges to encourage buildings to participate.

Ongoing commissioning is a great option for baking continuous improvement for system and energy performance into your building operations. The credit is achieved by essentially repeating the process steps undertaken for retro-commissioning over a cycling two-year period. 

Now that you’ve identified energy efficiency measures in the ASHRAE Level II audit or retro-commissioning analysis from EAc1, it’s time to cash in with the implementation credit.

The credit is really a no-brainer if your project is pursuing EAc1, as the cost outlay is typically small and the long-term returns on those expenditures tend to be very strong.

This credit can be one of the more challenging to achieve if your project is not currently using compliant cleaning equipment—and many projects are not, particularly those that are paying attention to green cleaning for the first time. 

Teams should become familiar with the required sustainability criteria by equipment type. It’s fairly common for a piece of equipment to meet some but not all of the criteria—the noise limit, for example, can be difficult to achieve.

Integrated pest management (IPM) aims to limit the negative impacts that conventional pest control often has on the health of building occupants. The goal of IPM is to avoid unnecessary use of pesticides and prioritize the use of least-toxic methods for managing pests. 

This credit offers two paths for meeting the requirements. Under the first option you’ll need to create and adopt an IPM plan and implement it 100% of the time.

Alternatively, teams can use a pest vendor that is certified by one of the allowable third party certification programs.

This credit encourages project teams to reduce the amount of mercury used in building lighting. When building management controls all lamp purchases, the credit is readily achievable, while multi-tenant buildings with decentralized purchasing will find it more challenging.

Remember that the mercury content of each individual lamp does not need to meet the credit threshold of 70 picograms per lumen hour. Your team needs to meet this target on average for all lamps purchased during the performance period. This provides teams with some flexibility in selecting lamps.

This credit involves implementing the prerequisite policy you developed and demonstrating actual waste diversion achievement over the performance period. Teams must track waste generation and diversion for both ongoing consumables and durable goods, and achieve the minimum diversion rate for both to earn the credit (50% for ongoing waste, 75% for durable goods waste). 

The intent of this credit is to reduce energy consumption by choosing high-efficiency buildings, fixtures, and equipment for your tenant fit out. Teams that are familiar with LEED 2009 should be aware that the referenced energy code has been updated to ASHRAE 90.1-2010 from 90.1-2007.

Meeting this prerequisite is easy for most buildings, particularly newer ones, but there are a few things keep in mind. 

You’ll need to inventory all of the refrigerant-containing equipment present in the building including small supplemental AC units and other unitary cooling equipment. This can be a time-consuming process, especially if tenants have installed their own supplemental equipment.