From the Editor
LEED is getting a facelift, and it’s going to be major — especially for users of the LEED for Existing Building: Operations and Maintenance (LEED-EBOM) rating system. Details continue to emerge, credits continue to be tweaked, and a third comment period looms, but one area of credit reconstruction is a surety. Each credit will include two separate requirements, being called the Establishment and the Performance parts. And you have to earn them both.

On first brush, that makes it sound like LEED-EBOM will be more difficult. But, really, it’ll be much easier — paperwork, data collection and analysis, and submission-wise. Why? Let’s take a look at what each part means to answer that.

The Establishment portion requires LEED-EBOM users to put in place strategies that are “static and foundational.” That means creating policies and procedures, putting meters in place, and other strategies that will be around for the longhaul.

The Performance potion is just like what it sounds — it requires users to ensure that the foundational and static strategies put in place in the Establishment portion of the credit come to fruition in terms of, well, performance.

The overarching idea with rewriting the credits this way is to make LEED-EBOM recertification much easier. As you know, LEED-EBOM requires recertification a minimum of every five years. This new credit structure will streamline that process because users will only need to submit the Performance sections of each credit to show that they’re still complying with the credit. It’ll save a lot of redundancy in the submission process.

And, it’ll continue to help ensure that LEED certified buildings actually are high-performance buildings — which, of course, is the goal, since LEED is a “leadership” standard.

The U.S. Green Building Council will release the new versions of all the rating systems — LEED 2012, as they’re being referred to — in October at the Greenbuild conference in San Francisco.

What do you think of the new credit structure? Does it make LEED-EBOM more attractive to you as a way to get a handle on the sustainable performance of your building?

Cheers,

Green Strategies
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In the News
Square Footage of LEED Certified Existing Buildings Surpasses New Construction
The U.S. Green Building Council announced that, for the first time, LEED-EBOM certified square footage totals more than LEED-NC certified square footage.

Green Multimedia
LEED-EBOM: Long-term Sustainability
In this video podcast, Gavin Gardi, sustainable program manager of The Christman Company, explains how his company used LEED-EBOM to promote long-term sustainability on a LEED-NC building that didn’t immediately perform as well as it was expected to.

GreenTech Conference & Exposition

Recertification: The Key to Making Sustainability Sustainable
This presentation from the 2011 GreenTech Conference & Exposition by Michael Arny, president, Leonardo Academy, provides information on LEED-EBOM recertification, including a seven-step process facility managers should follow.