The LEED Online credit form requires this data to compare to historical operating costs and determine the simple payback of sustainability initiatives.
Track overall operating costs for the project building over the performance period and record the costs associated with significant sustainability actions taken during the performance period.
Become familiar with the required data and begin tracking cost impacts early in the LEED process. It is much easier to document costs as you go than to investigate costs retroactively.
Work closely with the accounting division of your organization to identify this information. For buildings with relatively detailed records and a willing accounting department, this credit should be very achievable.
Most buildings have this data in some form, but project teams need to compile reliable figures and categorize costs accurately to provide the documentation required by LEED.
The critical goal in assembling this building data is not to compare one building to another, but to analyze how your building performs over time. Therefore, consistency in category allocations from year to year is more important than establishing the “right” allocations. For example, if you use microfiber cloths to clean your building and have them professionally cleaned, it doesn’t matter whether you allocate that expense under “Supplies/Materials” or “Miscellaneous,” as long as you allocate it consistently in your records each year.
For any data you provide in the LEED Online credit form, make sure you provide at least five years’ worth. If you are unable to provide at least five years of data, you can still earn this credit, but you must provide a narrative explaining why there are gaps in the data.
If you don’t have itemized historical financial data for the subcategories, you can still pursue the credit as long as an accurate total for that general category is available.
Although it is not explicitly stated in the LEED Reference Guide, if you’ve owned your building for less than five years, it’s acceptable to just provide data for those years as long as you provide a narrative explaining the situation.
Collect the overall operating costs of the project building for the previous five years (or length of building occupancy, whichever is shorter). Use the categories and line items specified in the LEED Online credit form for detail on the type of information that is required.
