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Facility managers continue to look to LEED when greening their operations. To help managers attain facility green goals, the U.S. Green Building Council offers five tips to successfully implementing LEED certification.
1) Plan to succeed
It is important that at the very beginning of the project, the certification goal is identified, measured and communicated effectively to the design team. As simple as this sounds, there is a lot of value in having conversations to make sure everyone is on the same page about the goal and how to get there (realistically).
In the planning stages, it is important to target credits and measure the likelihood of achieving the points within those credits. IES TaP, a secure online collaborative portal to enhance management of the LEED workflow, allows the user to simulate/test multiple scenarios and helps inform the right approach to take on the project to achieve the desired certification goal.
2) Closely monitor progress
It is essential to keep close track of your LEED projects at all times, watching for any issues that may cause a setback to your project achieving its certification goal. Unplanned hiccups hold projects back. Having an understanding of how these mid-project adjustments affect the projects as a whole can mean the difference between earning LEED Gold and Platinum status.
The visual dashboard incorporated in IES TaP allows you to see all of your current projects in one place and monitor their progress toward certification in real time. At the individual project level, you can also view the credit and documentation progress per section and monitor the progress of individual team member responsibilities.
3) Communication is key
The project team must communicate and collaborate well as they work toward achieving the project certification goal, ideally while being managed by an experienced LEED AP. It is important that the project team is clear on their individual responsibilities and the progress the project is making and have the ability to highlight where there may be input from other team members or the project LEED AP required.
IES TaP provides a breakdown of the individual documentation requirements and allows each requirement to be allocated to a team member. With automatic e-mail reminders for project team responsibilities, everyone on the team is kept aware of what is required of them in order to submit the project for certification on time, giving the project manager one less thing to think about. If someone on the project team is not pulling their weight, there is a helpful project notification that the project manager can send which contains all the pertinent information of the project status and team member responsibilities. Everyone knows who has to provide what and by when.
4) Know your credits
Make sure all team members have the relevant guidance from the USGBC on hand, filtered so that the relevant information is available for the credit being worked on.
IES TaP gives you access to the USGBC credit library at credit level, access to LEED Online forms and real-time synchronization with LEED Online. LEED APs can also supply specific guidance on the credit to assist team members through the public commenting system or create additional custom requirements and assign responsibilities as needed.
5) Work smarter, not harder
Make sure the engagement with LEED requirements is no more onerous for the project team than it needs to be. The benefit of using a tool like IES TaP is the ability to cut down the project management workload, helping the design team work in as smart a way as possible.