By Marcy Marro Over the past 14 years, a lot of advances have been made in the green marketplace. Attaining Silver, Gold or even Platinum LEED certification through the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has gotten easier. The once hard-to-come-by products and materials needed to achieve LEED credits are now commonplace and available through most… Continue reading LEED Certification and the Documentation Process
By Marcy Marro
Over the past 14 years, a lot of advances have been made in the green marketplace. Attaining Silver, Gold or even Platinum LEED certification through the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has gotten easier. The once hard-to-come-by products and materials needed to achieve LEED credits are now commonplace and available through most supply houses. But, one of the key parts of the certification process remains unchanged–the documentation.
The cornerstone of any submission considered for certification is the documentation. And, the required paperwork process is still a very detailed and lengthy one. There are many credits within the LEED rating system that are solely dependent on the work and input of designers. Other portions require both the design and construction teams to work together to properly document the materials used on a project. It is, therefore, important that contractors are well aware of all of the specifications and requirements needed to achieve each credit, so they can ensure everything is being accurately accounted for along the way.
Just recently, I was discussing the correct way to document the steel procured for a project with an industry peer. The conversation centered on the type of information that should be submitted as back-up documentation for the Recycled Content and the Regional Materials credits. These two credits actually represent four credit points, with two points available for the amount of recycled content in a particular material and two points available for purchasing the material from sources close to the project site.
Teams seeking to achieve these two credits must do several things. First, the design of the building must accurately highlight what materials have been specified for the project. In a design-bid-build delivery, all of the materials selections should be vetted by the design team to ensure the correct amount of recycled and regional material will be incorporated into the project and the points will be awarded. It is rare when the specifications for a project are so specific that all a contractor has to do is follow the design to achieve these points. Instead, a lot of documentation is required.
Both the recycled content and the regional materials credits rely on a ratio to demonstrate the team has fulfilled the requirement threshold and will be awarded the corresponding credit points. The ratio shows how much recycled or regional material is used in relation to all other materials incorporated into the project. A team must demonstrate that they have utilized a minimum of 10 percent of regional materials to earn one point in each credit and prove they’ve utilized 20 percent to be awarded two points under the current rating system. While the threshold for these two credits is well defined and it may be easy to place verbiage in a specification that incorporates materials with high amounts of recycled and regional materials, it is a different story when creating the documentation needed to demonstrate compliance to the credits. In this situation, contractors should be fully engaged in the project and their support for LEED certification.
To document these two credits, several pieces of information are required, including the cost of the material being supplied for the entire project. This includes costs associated with the division of work, excluding electrical, plumbing, HVAC, specialties and vertical transportation. In the case of the recycled content credits, the contractor must demonstrate that the materials purchased have recycled content in them.
The recycled credit is further broken down into two classifications for recycled content: post-consumer and pre-consumer. Pre-consumer recycled content is material that is recycled on an industrial basis. For example, if glass from a manufacturer is broken during the manufacturing process and is put back into the process before the finished material is sold to the public, it would be considered pre-consumer recycled content. This type of recycling effort is common in many industries, and because of that, the USGBC only values those materials at half the rate of those made from post-consumer recycled content. An example of post-consumer content would be steel materials that are made from melted down cars and appliances. Those materials are valued at actual cost.
Once the amount of recycled content is known for a particular product, the exercise continues until all of the materials in a particular specification section is exhausted. In the case of steel subcontractors, they must document the recycled content amount of each of the components used in the project. Each of these materials may have its own amount of recycled content and, for steel suppliers, that amount of recycled content going into a particular product may have a different amount of recycled content based on the manufacturing location.
Not every steel mill uses the same formula to produce its steel. It is not uncommon for a supplier to manufacture in several locations, and each of those locations may have a different amount of recycled content. In this case, each piece of steel must be tracked for the amount of recycled content.
The bottom line is, whether you’ve been through multiple certifications or you are taking part in your first LEED effort, it’s important to know the amount of documentation that will be needed to properly account for items, like recycled content. Those on the design team may feel they’ve done their jobs by placing verbiage in the specification, but it is important that contractors become familiar with the requirements of the credits and include all of the necessary specifics to successfully complete the documentation and, ultimately, earn LEED certification.
