Assess the project’s current procurement practices. Collaborate with the contractor, purchasing agents, and vendors early on to make a list of all products likely to be included in future alterations and additions, and if possible estimate the dollar amounts spent on each. Although you will compile actual cost information during the performance period, estimating cost at this early phase will help you identify where to focus your procurement efforts.

If tenants don’t participate in tracking, you can extrapolate purchasing data from other tenants to estimate purchase quantities. However, all of those estimated purchases are assumed to be noncompliant for the purposes of LEED. That raises the percentage of purchases by participating tenants that must be compliant. (See example calculation in the Documentation Toolkit.) You can, however, exclude product tracking for up to 10% of the total building floor area, and not be penalized in this way.

Few facilities do alterations and additions in-house. More often they hire a contractor who buys all or at least most of the materials. It is best to get the contractor involved early on to help assess purchasing decisions.  

It is important to get buy-in from all tenants. Holding a meeting with all tenants to explain the intention of LEED certification and address specific concerns can help get the whole building on board.  

Unless your project has a large anchor tenant or an unusually high level of tenant cooperation, you may have an uphill battle in pursuing this credit due to the challenge of getting multiple tenants to share their purchasing data.

In multi-tenant buildings, purchases throughout the building must be documented for all tenants. It can be difficult if tenants don’t want to participate, and difficult to aggregate purchases for all tenants that may have their own individual systems for purchasing.

Identify and engage all purchasing entities for the project and coordinate procurement efforts early on. This can include the contractor, as they are frequently the purchasing agent, vendors, or operational purchasing departments.

LEED establishes a specific definition for qualifying facility alterations and additions in the LEED Reference Guide. Make sure your facility construction activities qualify as an alteration or addition. 

Alterations or additions must occur during the LEED performance period to qualify your project for this credit. Start by determining if any are likely to occur.

Develop salvaged furniture procurement recommendations into a purchasing policy.