commentCertifying Buildings En Masse
When property-management giant CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) committed to certifying 100 buildings under the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance (LEED-EB) program in November 2007, following through on its pledge would have more than doubled the number of certified buildings (there were 59 LEED-EB certified projects at the time). While it’s taking longer than CBRE had hoped to select and register those projects, the company is undaunted in pursuit of this commitment, which is part of a broader environmental initiative that includes making the company carbon neutral by 2010. “We have been pleasantly surprised and overwhelmed at how much interest this has gotten from our clients,” said national director of sustainability David Pogue. CBRE manages 250 million ft2 of office space in the U.S. (more than twice as much as the next largest property manager), and 1.7 billion ft2 of buildings worldwide. The 100 buildings going through LEED-EB represent about 10% of the U.S. office properties that CBRE manages.
CBRE is property manager for the 2-million-ft2 Bank of America building under construction at Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan. The project is pursuing LEED for Core and Shell Platinum-level certification, while the Bank's interiors (in the building's lower 40-plus floors) are pursuing LEED for Commercial Interiors Gold.
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To streamline the certification process, CBRE has become one of 40 pilot partners in USGBC’s volume certification program in which credits that apply to the entire portfolio are preapproved. “[Building owners] have to submit the prototype documentation and a quality-control plan across the organization so we can know that there will be consistency in delivery and performance,” explained Doug Gatlin, USGBC’s vice president for market development. In the LEED-EB context, purchasing policies and green cleaning practices would be likely candidate credits for portfolio-wide approval. There are fewer candidate credits for volume approval in LEED-EB than in the new construction rating system because existing buildings tend to be more idiosyncratic than multiple new buildings following standard prototypes, Gatlin notes. He expects the biggest advantage of a volume approach for certifying operations to come from streamlined collection and submission of performance data.
Pogue’s team is analyzing over 100 potential buildings for participation in the program and has started registering a few of them with USGBC. The selection criteria include the interest level and stability of the owner, the condition of the building, and the value of the LEED brand in the building’s local market. Certifying existing facilities is especially useful for keeping them competitive in office markets “where there is new construction activity, creating new LEED buildings,” Pogue notes. CBRE is doing a LEED gap analysis for candidate projects and finding that achieving basic certification should not be too difficult for many properties. Achieving the water conservation requirement is likely to require the biggest investment, Pogue predicts.
For more information:
David Pogue, National Director of Sustainability
CB Richard Ellis
Asset Services Western Region
San Jose, California
408-453-7444
www.cbre.com
Doug Gatlin, Vice President for Market Development
U.S. Green Building Council
Washington, D.C.
800-795-1747, 202-742-3792
www.usgbc.org
This article was produced by BuildingGreen, Inc.- www.buildinggreen.com
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