The costs for this credit are project-specific.
The intent of this credit is to support high-performance, cost-effective project outcomes through an early analysis of the interrelationships among systems.
The main requirement is a series of early studies which will need to be documented and used to inform energy and water use, which will inform and be included with the Owner’s Project Requirements (OPR), Basis of Design (BOD), design documents, and construction documents.
Background
This credit requires projects to perform a potable water analysis and then create a water treatment program for any cooling towers or evaporative condensers that will be installed.
This credit has no added cost.
This credit mandates construction management “best practices” that should be standard practice for design and construction teams. For teams that have integrated these practices, there should be negligible construction cost premium.
This credit has no added cost.
This prerequisite requires some planning on behalf of the Contractor’s team toward setting and achieving waste diversion goals appropriately.
Local codes and regulations typically carry requirements for construction waste management; therefore, this prerequisite should not result in additional cost to the project, as it reflects typical industry best practices.
The cost of this credit is project-specific.
OPTION 1: DIVERSION
See MRp2: Construction and Demolition Waste Management Planning.
OPTION 2: REDUCTION OF TOTAL WASTE MATERIAL
A requirement to not generate more than 2.5 pounds of construction waste per square foot of the building’s floor area could reduce construction costs, at the expense of more time and attention for careful quantity take-offs and ordering, and ultimately front-end consideration for waste reduction efforts through the design of the building.
New to LEED v4 is this prerequisite requiring the installation of whole building water meters. It also requires sharing a building’s water usage data with USGBC for five years following certification.
You can’t control what you don’t measure, so this requirement gives owners the tools to recognize when there might be operational problems. After a suitable baseline period, owners will be able to recognize when water use changes dramatically, and can act to fix the problem quickly rather than be surprised by a water bill or damage from leaks.
Prerequisite Requirements
The prerequisite requires the installation of energy meters to track a building’s total energy usage for compliance. Separate meters are needed for segregating energy
uses, including electricity, natural gas, fuel oil, steam, chilled water, hot water, biomass, propane, etc. Utility meters may be used to demonstrate compliance and track energy usage, and delivery tickets from any fuels transported to the building may also be used.
OPTION 1: RAW MATERIAL SOURCE AND EXTRACTION REPORTING
This option focuses on corporate sustainability reporting—a well established, voluntary system common among large corporations. The credit lists several frameworks to choose from, but the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) offers the most common one. Projects have to use at least 20 different permanently installed products from at least five different manufacturers to achieve this option.
The cost of this credit is product-specific.
OPTION 1: MATERIAL INGREDIENT REPORTING
OPTION 2: MATERIAL INGREDIENT OPTIMIZATION
The cost of this credit is project-specific.