Page 363 - The Engineering Guide to LEED-New Construction Sustainable Construction for Engineers

324 Cha pte r Ei g h t

erosion may result. Usually the best scheduling technique for these types of activities
is the CPM.
Because of the need for detailed schedules with sequenced activities related to
several of the LEED credits, there is also a need for staging areas for these activities to
be noted on the plans. Some examples are as follows:
• Staging areas need to be noted for areas where materials may need to be covered
from the elements.
• Areas need to be designated for C&D debris separation and storage prior to
removal.
• Erosion and sediment control measures need to be designated on the site plans.

Lead People and LEED
Throughout the project it is important to make sure that there is some consistency in the
incorporation of LEED into the project. All summary information relating to the LEED
aspects should be filtered through one entity established for this, and frequent contact
should be made between the central LEED clearinghouse person and all the project
team members and interested parties. This entity may change through the course of a
project and the LEED information be passed to another, but there should always be a
central clearinghouse established at all times.
The inclusion of parties in LEED decisions outside of the core design team may be
crucial even at the onset of the project. For instance, modifications may impact earlier
zoning approvals, and many zoning-related changes may take months for approval,
severely impacting a project schedule. During the zoning stage, the lead for the project
may be, for instance, an attorney or planner, and later during detailed design, the lead
may pass to an architectural or other design firm. Nonetheless, there should be a central
contact for the green design aspects in contact with the project lead person who can see
if any changes have major impacts on the green process. In addition, many projects
have specialty designers and occupants or owner subsets, who should be involved. The
baseball stadium project at the University of South Carolina represents a case where
there are specialty designers for the baseball field as well as special needs during
operations of the team and managers which should be considered in decisions, including
many LEED related decisions.
So who should this green contact person be? This is a very good question, and the
answer may be that there should be several people following the LEED process, but with
only one designated at a time as the main clearinghouse. If the owner of a project is an
entity which does a lot of construction and has a construction management department,
then for consistency and continual improvement, the main LEED contact might be an
owner representative. If the owner of the project is not experienced in LEED or if the owner
does not expect to do multiple projects, then perhaps the LEED contact should come from
the design and construction community. Which field should the individual come from?
This is a function of experience, project scope, and project phase. For many projects, the
most influential LEED contact in the conceptual phase may be a civil and environmental
engineer or a landscape architect, as many of the initial decisions are site related. Then,
through detailed design, a contact with architectural or mechanical engineering design
experience might be the most knowledgeable. Similarly, in the construction phase it may
be easiest for a commissioning or contractor representative to oversee the main part of the