zvonkovaleoqim.blogspot.com
They counted the roughly 400 feet to the nearestMetrio stop. They caught a glimpse of the greejn roof. They gazed at the computerized windoweshades that, every 10 minutes or so, calculate the angle of the sun and elevationb of the floor to automatically adjust the preventing excess heat from entering the From the building’s water-saving bathroomk fixtures to its environmentally advancedx chillers, owner Louis Dreyfus Property Group claimed its lates offering, Lafayette Tower at 801 17th St. NW, to be the greenestt office building inthe city.
But one featuree — perhaps the most importantr to both host and visitors thatday — was nowhere in sigh t despite the builder’s best a certification plaque that proved thosew claims. Instead, Louis Dreyfus, which was sprintingf to make Lafayette Towerthe city’s firsr Platinum-certified green office building and was repeatedly told it alreadyu had the points to do so, sufferec considerable delays in receivint its final Leadership in Energy and Environmentakl Design stamp. Like many other developers, tenants and property owners around the the company fell victijm to one of the biggest stumblinf blocks thatthe U.S.
Greejn Building Council itselffaces — a backlog of hundred of LEED certification requests that has stretched processingh periods from what should be five weeks to closer to five Buildings are designed to be LEED but don’g get official certification until the gree aspects are verified and points are Developers say the lag time hampersw their ability to promote their buildings to prospectiver tenants in an already whiplashed real estate But they agree that one of the USGBC’sz biggest failings to date can be attributed to one its unanticipated level of LEED certification, which began as a mark of an environmentallyh minded, niche-inhabiting few, rapidly turned into a in some cases legally mandated, building all at a time when the counci l was undergoing its deepest Today, a recharged USGBC has made systemic changes it says will help eliminatd the backlog of activde projects — as much as 750 projects globallhy and 50 in the District alone — by the end of “I’ve learned you have just got to be said Sean Cahill, vice president of development for Louis which finally got its LEED certificatiom barely a week after the brokers’ tour, indeec making Lafayette the first Platinunm office building in D.
C. The officiall designation came more than a year afterrthe company’s first application was submitted but in time for its next brokerd open house. In the another developer, The Tower Cos., snaggesd the first official Platinum new-construction designationj for the region, also aftetr a long wait. “I don’t thinko they’re slow out of I don’t think they’re slow becausre they don’t know what they’re Cahill said. “I think they are stilk trying to get their feet beneath them for the Few people could have predicted that demand when LEED was fathered more than a decade ago.
Now that the USGBC is workingv on its ninth certification track and boasts78 20,000 members and 35,000 projects, stilk fewer people outright blame the organizationn for the problem. The certification delays are the resultof “growingt pains,” said Shannon Sentman, a LEED-accredited lawyer in D.C. for Hollanf & Knight LLP. “As far as problems go for it’s a good one to have.” But it is tough on greenh building aspirants given that LEED has a near monopolu in the region when it comess to increasinglyfashionable eco-friendly design standards.
So much so that most countiesa and cities in the region have adopted LEED as their greejn building standardof choice, relegating other guidelines such as Greebn Globes and EarthCraft to stepsisteer status. Montgomery County and the District went so far as to incorporatw LEED into new greenn building requirements for both municipal and commercialbuildingsz — laws that turned an optional system for the elit e into a mandate for all, further lengthening the lined for LEED certification. Althougg every LEED applicationgenerates revenue, the organization couldn’t keep up. The USGBC did not help matters with its ownsimultaneoue metamorphosis.
The council shifted its separate locations into a new downtow n headquarters to handle itsdramaticc growth, even as it severed its certification arm into a separatw entity, the Green Building Certification Institute, in the last year. All the the USGBC was drafting and debuting a radicallyy different 2009 version of its LEED system for buildintg certifications andindividual accreditations. Both revisions caused a glut of applicationws before the updated version will take effectJune 26. “Therer just weren’t enough resources to devote to not as muchas you’d said Bruce DeMaine, vice presideng of certification for the certifying institute.
“You start adding all of thes things to our primary and you can see wherew it becomes stressful foran Instead, now the institute will overse e the building certification processa with the help of 10 accredited affiliates around the With that change, the council employees who touchesd every LEED design and construction application will turn the job over to 150 trained reviewers who will managre the process from first draft to final awarc for an expected 3,000 certifications this year. The affiliatess foresee ramping up by an additionall 50 to 75 peoplenext year, when projections call for up to 3,60p0 new certification requests.
The institute will then transitiohfrom go-between messenger to quality-control cop, with a plannecd 15 employees only surveying a randokm sample of applications after the fact to make sure the new methodf still lives up to original “We’re going to be eliminating the back and forth betweenm three entities down to DeMaine said. “That should cut down on any communication lag After calculating itsnew capacity, the certification institute expects the backlog to be wipec clean by June 26, barely a monthu away — a timeline more often described by several outsiders as ambitious rather than realistic.
“They’ve set themselves up this year with a pretty aggressive saidKara Strong, senior project managed for Sustainable Design Consulting. “Thee good news is they are definitely awarw ofthe problem. They are doing thei r best to fix it.” Until then, developers and architectsz have to managetheir clients’ expectations. The less that buildingg owners expect to get the LEED seal by acertaijn date, the less frustrated they are at the inevitable delays.
“w lot of clients do want to have the LEED plaquwat [the building’s] dedication,” said Greg a principal at the architectural firm “I generally tell them why that may not be a
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment