Page 104 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

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BARRIERS TO HIGH-PERFORMANCE

BUILDINGS: WHY SOME PROJECTS

SUCCEED AND OTHERS FAIL

Let’s take a short pause and look at what might influence the successful undertaking of
a LEED project. As of June 2008, there were more than 53,000 LEED Accredited
Professionals (APs), so one would expect that the success rate (defined as eventual cer-
tification of a LEED registered project) would be increasing over time. It’s hard to say,
because there were still only about 1170 LEED-NC and LEED-CS certified projects, as
of June 2008. That means that most LEED APs have yet to complete their first LEED-
certified project and therefore have little “hands on” experience with the entire process,
from start to finish. And, as many professionals know, design and construction projects
are messy affairs, often with significant obstacles in the way of realizing the initial inten-
tions of the owners and designers. Nonetheless, buildings do get built and occupied
eventually. This book demonstrates a process that works for high-performing (LEED
Platinum) projects and shows you how to apply this same process to your own projects.
As of June 2008, there were nearly 7200 LEED-NC projects registered for eventual
certification, and slightly less than 1100 certified projects, about 15 percent of the
total registrations. In all other rating systems, there were 4060 projects registered,
and 435 certified, less than 11 percent. Look at the numbers in Table 5.1, comparing
registered versus certified LEED-NC projects to date.*
These numbers are not precise, because some version 2.0 projects switched to become
2.1 (when that became available) and some version 2.1 projects switched to become 2.2
projects in 2005 and 2006. In addition, LEED allows some combining of version 2.1 and
2.2 credits. Nonetheless, they are indicative of one relatively significant problem: even
allowing for the time lag in completing large commercial projects, 18 to 36 months after
registration, many projects that start out with the best intentions don’t end up certifying.

*USGBC Staff Data, prepared monthly.
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