Before a commercial building operates, it must meet the Leadership in Energy and Efficient Design (LEED) certification standards. They consider some of the things before issuing this certificate: construction, sustainability, water and energy efficiency, materials, and closeness to public transportation. This process has the primary goal of ensuring the building’s social, economic, and environmental impact.
However, many building owners and contractors have a hard time achieving their LEED certification, especially if they are new in the industry. Here are some strategies to achieve your goals keep your establishment operating: 1. Set LEED-certification targets and note them down. In LEED certification, four levels may correlate with the GRI reporting goals. These are the Certified (40-49 points), Silver (50 to 59 points), Gold (60 to 79 points), and Platinum (80+ points). By setting your target, you can easily lay down your plans for your building’s materials, components, and design. If your company wants to boost energy efficiency to earn more points, you can maximize your passive solar gains by using adequate HVAC controls for various building parts. You can also install daylight-responsive controls to make your power usage more efficient. This way, you can optimize your LEED pints as it will boost your environmental, social, and financial performance. While at it, you can also install LEED access doors and panels for your control systems. 2. Promote lifecycle value engineering When determining your construction project design’s expenses, it is essential to consider its life cycle and performance impact. Instead of doing an initial-cost value engineering, it would be better to do a lifecycle value engineering that will give an in-depth analysis of the future expenses when using a material. For example, a product may have a higher upfront cost, but in the end, it will give more benefits and may reduce the operating costs within a few months. It is an essential factor that will affect your LEED certification. 3. Set a higher goal to initiate creativity. By setting a higher goal for the LEED certification level in the planning phase, you can stimulate creativity and fresh ideas from your team. With a productive brainstorming session, you can find more ways to make your construction project more efficient and user-friendly. If some of the ideas don’t pass the management’s cost/benefit analysis, you will have more alternatives to back you up. 4. Ensure a common goal with your project team. Teamwork is essential when it comes to construction projects considering that this requires a group effort. If your members are not collaborating toward a common goal, achieving a satisfying result will be difficult. From the start, make sure that everyone knows about your LEED and GRI goals and share them with your team, architects, developers, engineers, subcontractors, designers, and project managers. Always be open with suggestions and feedback from everyone. 5. Prepare an adequate budget If you aim for a higher LEED certification level, you should prepare yourself to allocate a sufficient budget for your construction project. Although using some green features can promote sustainability and lower operating expenses in the long run, its initial installation and cost can still be pretty high. Ensure a realistic budget that can cover the overall project and some unexpected expenses. It will help in assuring the best qualities and outcomes without undesirable cutting corners. 6. Hire LEED-accredited professionals If you want to make sure that your LEED certification will go smoothly, it is ideal to hire some LEED-accredited professionals. Ask them for some advice while you are planning and carrying them out on your construction projects. Ensure that you will only get those with a high level of knowledge and familiarity with the process. It will also be beneficial to know about the green building principles and ways to make commercial buildings sustainable. Conclusion LEED certification is an essential requirement that you must comply with before you operate a commercial building. It will require you to put in some effort when planning the materials and engineering procedure you will use. You should also install some sustainable materials to get more points, such as using LEED access doors and panels when providing access to vital building components. Get them from a reliable company like Best Access Doors and call us to get recommendations and quotations from our product specialists.
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June 2022
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