FROM THE EDITOR

As we get deeper and deeper into the conversation about what constitutes a high-performance building, one of the many elephants in the room is what role (if any) building certification plays. Can a building be considered high-performance only because an architect or a facility manager says so? Or is some sort of third-party certification program required to prove a building meets certain energy, water, IEQ, and other benchmarks that denote high performance?

There is no single certification that inarguably designates a building as “high performance.”  There are, however, several programs (LEED, BOMA 360, Green Globes, etc.) that attempt to designate buildings as green or sustainable. But as we’ve learned, "high-performance" is a term that attempts to move a building a step beyond the traditional notion of a green. Certainly, a green building can be high-performance and a high-performance building can be green. But let’s not get bogged down in semantics.

--sponsorAd2--

The issue is whether a certification program is worth the extra time and expense – even if that extra expense has nothing to do with “add-on features,” but is only about paying third-party reviewers or auditors. And what’s more, if a building has a certification, is there a plan in place (a LEED-EBOM initiative, for example) to ensure that high-performance design goals are carried through into efficient and high-performance operations?

So the rub is two-fold. First, the advantage of a third-party is that it verifies certain goals — high-performance and other — were met. The U.S. Green Building Council recently published a one-page brief titled “Why LEED Certification Matters,” and while it’s written from a particular point of view, it’s also an interesting summary of the arguments for certification.

One of those arguments is that the certification goal is often the carrot that moves a project team all in the same direction. But once the carrot is caught, what’s the next goal? How do you ensure that certification isn’t a one-time event? Because if certification IS a one-time event, that totally defeats the true purpose of a certification in the first place — the purpose being to guide project teams and facility managers toward creating an efficient, high-performance building as long as the building stands, not just when the doors open.

As always, I’m interested to hear from you. What role do you think third-party certifications play in creating high-performance buildings? Are they important? Or are they unnecessary add-ons?

Cheers,

Greg Zimmerman, editor  

--sponsorAd3--

HIGH-PERFORMANCE STRATEGIES

Is There Still a LEED Premium?

This article explains how expertise in the industry has driven down the cost of LEED certification. It also deals with the question of whether a LEED certification is simply just buying a plaque.

IN THE NEWS

Top 10 LEED States

The U.S. Green Building Council has unveiled its annual list of top 10 states for LEED on a per-capita basis.

HIGH-PERFORMANCE MULTIMEDIA

As LEED Grows, GBCI Takes Steps to Handle Workload, Ensure Quality

This podcast conversation between Building Operating Management’s editor Edward Sullivan and the Green Building Certification Institute’s Peter Templeton covers how GBCI keeps up with the growth of LEED and ensures consistency in certifying LEED projects.