Top Six Things LEED Consultants Do Wrong in Specs
Mark Kalin
By Mark Kalin
LEED consultants are paid to lend their expertise to achieve a project’s LEED certification goals. Their decisions focus on achieving credits and their participation is absolutely vital to the project, but some can actually work against the project's sustainability goals. Here are the top six problems I see.
#1 Discouraging bidding by specifying unrealistic LEED requirements
When a specification requires a regional source, a recycled content percentage, and certain certifications for a product, the specifier has to be certain that conforming products exist. On a recent project, the only bidder for the doors couldn’t actually meet all the requirements and put in a premium price. Other bidders declined to bid citing the requirements of the specifications. The worst outcome was a project that decided to abandon certification because of unnecessary requirements in the specifications that pushed the project over budget.
Solution: Don’t use the specifications as a research tool. Either find out what’s available and specify what you want the contractor to purchase, or give the contractor options and flexibility to meet the LEED requirements, using a mix of products.
#2 Not recognizing that performance is a sustainable attribute
There is a roofing product that has 100 percent recycled content, is 100 percent recyclable, and is made from 100 percent regional materials. Unfortunately, it is only guaranteed until the first rain, since it’s made out of papier-mâché.
Solution: Performance is more important than recycled content for roofing. Always seek the highest-performing roofing material with a 20-year track record (which includes PVC). If you’re not going to keep PVC out of the inside of your building, why be concerned about PVC on the roof? Personally, I doubt that either PVC, TPO, EPDM, or modified bitumen are edible, and am more concerned about the damage that water intrusion can have on the inside of a building when the roofing fails.
#3: Adding ‘their’ language to the specifications.
Sorry, poetic language doesn’t buy products, nor does repeating all the VOC levels in every spec section make sense. The specifications are contract documents that contain the qualitative requirements for materials and assemblies. Subcontractors must put in bids with only a few hours to evaluate a project.
Solution: Specify products that comply with LEED requirements and require the submittals necessary to document the required credits.
#4: Believing manufacturer’s product literature
Not too long ago a flooring manufacturer overstated its sourcing and FSCIndependent, third-party verification that forest products are produced and sold based on a set of criteria for forest management and chain-of-custody controls developed by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international nonprofit organization. FSC criteria for certifying forests around the world address forest management, legal issues, indigenous rights, labor rights, multiple benefits, and environmental impacts. claims. The product as promised was not the product as delivered—they never had a source for FSC wood. …And then there was that article in the magazine that claimed brick would earn 26 LEED points. …And then there was that insulation manufacturer that was fined $155,000. by the FTC for false R-value claims.
Solution: Ask the manufacturer to submit a sample of LEED documentation from a previous project as an example, instead of relying on marketing literature.
#5: Issuing a LEED Scorecard with “maybe” as an option
We all recognize that achieving some credits is uncertain until construction is well underway. However, “maybe” means “no” to a subcontractor if extra expense is involved.
Solution: At least one LEED consultant will not include a scorecard in the project manual. Others will reissue the scorecard monthly. The important thing is to hold the contractor accountable for making sure that the overall target is achieved, with a little cushion to allow for missing or faulty documentation.
#6: Calling LEED “good enough”
LEED is intended to point the project in the right direction and open up conversations about sustainability goals, but too often its goals are adopted without critical review.
Solution: The consultant should engage with the client about their intentions and priorities, and then revisit those throughout. That gives them the tools to answer questions like: Do you abandon the requirement for FSC wood once you achieve 50%? Is it the scorecard or sustainability that governs?
Mark Kalin is President of Kalin Associates Specifications and currently Chair of CSI’s National Technical Committee. The firm has completed specs for over 200 LEED projects. Free spec downloads and position papers at www.kalinassociates.com.
5 Comments
Item 6
Item 6, while not specs specific, is an excellent point. It implies employing an integrative design path. This uses LEED as a framework that defines metrics and not the bar. The consultant is then the facilitator of a sustainability and goal clarification process and not merely a LEED point guardian.
LEED Specifications
Thanks for this helpful article Mark. We've been doing LEED consulting since 2002 and we typically offer assistance with specifications as a basic service. We explain to our project teams that our role is to "edit and supplement" the work done by a professional spec writer. Sometimes we get a great template to start with, which makes our job easy. Other times the spec writer isn't so adept with LEED. So, my contribution is:
1. Hire a spec writer that is experience with LEED specs.
2. The LEED consultant's role is to "edit and supplement."
Regarding items 3 & 5 above: We agree that sprinkling LEED language throughout the specs is generally redundant. Our approach is to add the LEED section numbers under the "Related Sections & Divisions." We do include our LEED checklist within the LEED section and we make sure we only have "yes" or "no" points selected. Additionally, we find that a pre-construction LEED & commissioning meeting is the most valuable way to ensure the contractors are in tune with LEED requirements.
LEED Specifications
Mark, the larger problem is that most LEED consultants have never DESIGNED anything, so they should restrain themselves from doing anything more than suggesting LEED product goals/requirements and products they know have been adopted in previous projects. LEED consultants should NEVER write specifications; that's the job of the design professionals.
All good points about specs, but "LEED consultants" is apparently a pretty broad term. We are professional LEED consultants, not designers who profess to do LEED also, and we find most of these well taken criticisms to be perpetuated by Master Spec and designers who don't have practical experience with applying LEED in the field.
As LEED consultants, we spend a lot of time editing this kind of stuff out and preparing bidder's requirements that speak directly to contractor issues. Designers don't always have a practical, constructability-oriented mindset whether working on LEED projects or not.
This is an important issue of education and awareness. And the emphasis is significant. I have seen several design teams go through enormous effort to figure out how to "pin" the contractor on MR4/5 compliance through the specification. That's likely 2pts among the 40 to 60 they are pursuing, when 2/3 of what is needed will be design points that they are nowhere near conversant enough with or accountable enough for.
Whether LEED consultant or designer, the professional involved should have practical field experience with design and construction to be an effective sustainable design practitioner. It's unfortunate to cloud such an important issue with generalizations about either.
#1 Discouraging bidding by specifying unrealistic LEED requirements
For the most part, putting in LEED requirements, for typical building products is unnecessary.
#2 Not recognizing that performance is a sustainable attribute.
Never change an architectural specification from you would typically chose for a project. Pick a "greener" version of a product from the same product line, and with the same A&E performance specs.
#3: Adding ‘their’ language to the specifications.
Write your own requirements. Tailor them to the specs to make them job specific. Do not assume that MasterSpec LEED is correct. Many of the specified products do not comply with VOC requirements, the products don't exist, or the company no longer exists. Use performance language for VOCsA volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is a carbon compound that vaporizes (becomes a gas) at normal room temperatures. VOCs contribute to air pollution directly and through atmospheric photochemical reactions (excluding carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, carbonic acid, metallic carbides and carbonates, and ammonium carbonate) to produce secondary air pollutants, principally ozone and peroxyacetyl nitrate.. Do not provide a list of three products which, in my experience, are never what the subcontractors actually use for a projects. Verify the products by reviewing the actual GC submittals.
#4: Believing manufacturer’s product literature.
Throw out what is obviously wrong. One claim I had stated that gypsum was mined in a high urban density area. Obviously not true, and easily check with Google Earth. The claim was silently deleted, and never saw the light of day, at least not for my projects.
By the way, there is no such thing as "submit a sample of LEED documentation from a previous project as an example." The GBCI/USGBC does not review claims at the level of verifying a claims letter. The best you can get is an approved claim from the LEED Forms, which is nothing more than a summary. Just because product gets approved does not guarantee that it will not get challenged later on.
#5: Issuing a LEED Scorecard with “maybe” as an option.
Never give a contractor a LEED scoresheet. Set the LEED requirements they are required to follow in stone. Meaning, put the requirements for the documentation you want directly in the specifications.
Very few LEED Consultants do what I do. That is work with LEED A&E submittals during the normal submittal process and clearing up and verifying claims made during the actual construction work.
#7: Don't rely entirely on LEED Specification Writers.
The reason I write my own LEED specs and do not rely on "LEED" Spec writers do take care of the work --I cross-check everything and provide drop in requirements-- is that spec writers do not provide A&E submittal coordination and follow through services. You have to understand the pains of actually building something and working with subcontractors (small firms, some without internet access, some with limited schooling) to get the LEED products and claims right. I take what I learn, the hard way, and feed it back into my future LEED projects.
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