- What is LEED?
- LEED 2009
- Benifits of LEED Certification
- Sustainability Progam Design and Management
- Our LEED projects in progress
What is LEED?
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings.
LEED gives building owners and operators the tools they need to have an immediate and measurable impact on their buildings’ performance.
LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: Site Planning, Water Management, Energy Management, Material Use, Indoor Air Quality and Innovation & Design Process.
LEED provides a roadmap for measuring and documenting success for every building type and phase of a building’s lifecycle.
Intellicenter Tampa, Florida LEED CS 2.0, Certified
LEED presents a complete framework for assessing building performance and meeting sustainability goals. Based on well-founded scientific standards LEED emphasizes state of the art strategies for its five categories. Each category has credits and points.
LEED has certification levels based on points achieved including silver, gold and platinum levels.
LEED offers environmental benefits, economic, community, health and safety benefits, reduces the impact on natural resources consumption, enhances occupant comfort and health, and minimizes strain on local infrastructure.
topLEED 2009
Changes are in store for one of the biggest brand names in green construction. The U.S. Green Building Council announced a new version of its well-known Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards for new construction. Currently, the group has opened up the new version for public comment, but plans to put the new rules into place in January 2009.
California Academy of Sciences Green Roof
These changes should help certify more buildings that are waiting for approval. As part of the changes, the USGBC’s sister agency, the Green Building Institute, would become an accreditation body and license third-party certifying organizations that could whittle down the backlog. According to the USGBS, more than 7,100 new construction projects are registered with LEED, but just over 1,000 are certified.
Another change would recognize “regionalizing” some of the LEED points. One criticism we’ve always heard about LEED is that there is no “extra credit” for reducing water use in, say Arizona. So, in other words, an Arizona project gets treated the same as a project in Chicago, where Lake Michigan looks pretty much like an ocean of fresh water.
Beyond those two changes, builders also will contend with an expanded point system — up to 100 points from the current 69 points — and tougher thresholds to reach the LEED levels.
“This is in keeping with the USGBC’s plan on trying to incrementally move the market toward higher performance goals with each revision of the rating system,” according to an analysis done by the Mechanical Contractors Association of America.
The points are also re-weighted to address areas that many consider more important. For example, the Water Efficiency points double to 10 points from 5 points. LEED 2009 also includes a new benchmark for buildings to reduce potable water use by 20 percent.
topBenefits of LEED Certifications
Seattle City Hall
LEED certification offers compelling proof to you, your clients, your peers and the public at large that you've achieved your environmental goals and your building is performing as designed. Getting certified allows you take advantage of a growing number of state and local government incentives, and can help boost press interest in your project.
Sustainability
BCH Mechanical assists their clients, building developers, owners and General Contractors to become more successful by integrating core principles of sustainability into their work.
BCH Mechanical will help identify cost and the impact of various LEED initiatives. We offer a client-friendly approach that enables our customers to become more successful in their own terms - improving profitability, reducing risk, enhancing PR and branding and helping protect the planet.
Sustainability Program Design and Management
BCH Mechanical draws upon experience in organizational development and planning to develop scalable, comprehensive sustainability plans for projects. Our sustainability program helps any size organization understand sustainability and "systems thinking," and systematically reduce their environmental footprint while reducing cost, avoiding risk or improving long-term strategic objectives.
Set a Clear Environmental Target
When you begin the design phase of your project, decide on the level of LEED certification you are aiming for and settle on a firm overall budget. You might also want to consider including an optional higher certification target or a "stretch" goal to stimulate creativity.
Stick to Your Budget and Your LEED Goal
Design goals should be clearly defined and clearly communicated, if you want to be sure your entire project team is focused on meeting your LEED goal on budget. This also allows for maintaining the environmental and economic integrity of your project at every turn.
Engineer for Life Cycle Value
At the design stage be sure to examine green investments in comparison with how they will affect expenses over the entire life of the building. Be open to new ideas. If you are considering cutting anything out of a budget, look first at its relationship to other budget items to see if keeping it will help you achieve money-saving synergies, as well as LEED credits. Many energy-saving features can allow for the resizing or elimination of other equipment, or may reduce total capital costs by paying for themselves immediately or over a period of time of operation.
Hire LEED-Accredited Professionals
You need a firm commitment to achieving energy efficiency. Daryl Blume, the President of BCH Mechanical brings his knowledge of the mechanical industry, his LEED AP Certification and his LEED experience to your project.
BCH Mechanical, Inc. is working diligently to help develop "green" sustainable buildings for all types of commercial applications such as hospitals, office buildings, laboratories and other types of facilities. We have extensive experience with LEED principles and the full compliment of categories including:
- Water Use Reduction
- Refrigerant Management
- Optimize Energy Performance Enhanced Commissioning
- Enhanced Refrigerant Management
- Measurement and Verification
- Outdoor Air Delivery Monitoring
- Construction IAQ Management Plan
- Increased Ventilation
- Controllability of Systems, Thermal Comfort
- Thermal Comfort, Design and Verification
- Innovation in Design
