My Built Environment: Good, Bad, and Really Ugly

Recently a friend of mine and I were discussing what I was going to do with my LEED accreditation and discussing LEED in general. I actually have thought about this, and what I would like to do is specialize in LEED for New Developments, as well as New Home Construction. This will be in addition to what we do for commercial projects, but I want to specialize in the residential end.

With new development, particularly residential neighborhoods, there are very few standards for green development, other than doing what is right to minimize the impacts of development and creating them to be more sustainable than the current development patterns. In this respect, I think LEED-ND will be very beneficial and I want to be in the forefront of this. Convincing developers to go this route will not be easy, and it will also require municipalities, utility providers, and contractors to all think differently. One of the first projects I want to test with this will be own development. Right now, LEED-ND is in the pilot process, and will not be brought online until early 2009, so we will follow the pilot guidelines and hopefully become certified as we go to construction.

LEED for homes is an entirely different matter. There are many green building standards for residential construction. Locally, we have the Built Green program administered by the Metro Denver HBA, Energystar, the upcoming ANSI national standards, and some others. All are good programs with varying degrees of market acceptance. When I was building several years ago, I followed the Built Green program, and even listed some of the homes. At the time, that program was unknown in Fort Collins and it had little market viability.

Both the Built Green and Energy Star programs focus more on the building, mostly favoring energy and water consumption. I think where LEED might be different is that it looks at a more comprehensive picture from site development all the way through indoor air quality. It is also designed to dovetail with LEED-ND. With our development, we will also require the builders to follow some kind of green standard. Whether we want to dictate which standard, or allow flexibility we will have to decide. Of the measures that we will have to evaluate will be market acceptance of the various standards, and the cost of implementing those standards. LEED in particular can be quite expensive. Just the fees paid to USGBC and to have a third party rater involved can run from $3-7,000 per home depending upon the level of certification (taken from Green Builder magazine, July 2007). This is pretty steep for the typical home where every dollar counts for affordability and buyers compare prices per square foot more than features. That being said, there could be some economy of scale achieved if a builder has stock plans that are repeated several times, or uses the same materials and specs from home to home. This would in theory reduce the paperwork that is incurred. I don’t know if this is possible, but will look into it further. If USGBC wants LEED to be a viable standard for home building, they will have to address the cost issues.

Hey I passed! The actual test was nothing like all the practice ones I took. I can’t say it was easier or harder, just different. Anyway, no more testing for awhile…

Today is the day of the big LEED test. I think I am ready, I have been studying and cramming for the last two weeks, and my head is full.

Most of you probably know that Colorado finally passes a licensure law this year for Landscape Architects. Colorado was one of only two states in the nation that did not license Landscape Architects. Anyway, the law was passed this year in June, and it state that everyone had to be licensed by January 1 in order to call themselves Landscape Architects. Problem is, the licensure applications wern’t made available until late October. At first I didn’t think much about it, but when they became available I thought it would be fun to get license #1, or at lest in the top 10. So I hauled butt, got my application together, got my references, got my transcripts, paid the fee, fedexed it to the state, and had it back into them in 4 days.

Then nothing….for over 6 weeks.

I saw online that several other professionals had become licensed, but nothing on mine.
So this week I started calling people. First I called the phone number on the web page. Of course, that doesn’t allow you to talk to a real person. Then I called the director of the whole thing, since I had his card. He had someone else call me back, and who left a message. She gave me the email address of the person to contact. So I emailed her Wednesday morning…and never heard back. Finally, yesterday I was able to get hold of the program director directly, explained everything. I could tell he was not pleased. 5 minutes later I finally get a call back from the person who was handling my application. Since mine was the first one she had gotten, she had questions on it (more from the general process), so she set it aside…then forgot about it.

So it was only because I raised a fuss, that my application is being approved at all. Fortunately, there are no issues with my application, and it will be approved, but why did I bother to rush to get it in, only to be penalized for it. Arrggghhhh.

I have been spending all of my spare time the last couple of weeks studying to take the exam to become a LEED accredited professional. For those of you who don’t know, LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Currently, this is all the rage for public and commercial buildings. In very simplified terms, it is a way to design buildings, and the site around them more sustainibly that traditional practices. All kinds of things are looked at such as energy consumption, daylighting, off-gassing, material selections, landscaping etc. Projects have to earn a certain number of points to achieve various certification levels. Of course, the higher the certification level, the more “green” the building is. This all has positive merits of course, and is the way things should just be done. It should be the standard, rather than an option.

Anyway, this is no easy test to study for. This is a complicated program, and the test itself is not open book. I don’t think I have studied so hard since I took my licensing exam way back when. The test is this Friday, so I will let you know how I do. Fortunately, you do get the results right away.