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Credit language straight from USGBC
Need to check up on the exact LEED credit language from the LEED Rating System on the fly? LEEDuser includes the verbatim language. Members get:
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- On the jobsite without your bulky LEED Reference Guide? Check up on the credit language details here.
- Credit language content is used by permission of the U.S. Green Building Council.
49 Comments
Base line for commutes
Your getting it done sections says that "The baseline is calculated by assuming that each regular building occupant drives alone to and from the project building twice a day, five days a week, in a conventional vehicle.
Isn't the standard one round trip per day?
Tristan Roberts replied Editor – LEEDuser, BuildingGreen, LLC Jan 12 2010
Yes it is. What are your thoughts on that?
Note that the baseline stipulates that the trip is "alone" and in a "conventional" vehicle. Carpooling and using efficient vehicles are two ways (among several others such as using public transit) to improve over the baseline.
clarify
I think what Robert is asking is whether LEED means "to and from the building once a day" (round trip), or "to and from the building twice a day" which means two round trips.
I would agree with Tristan - it should be one round trip, or two drives (to the building in the morning and away from the building at night) total.
Jenny Carney replied Director, YRG sustainability May 20 2010
Some teams take the approach of allowing for respondents to report separately for how they get to versus from work, in which case the baseline is 2 one-way trips per day per regular occupant.
I've seen other teams just assume that the mode of transportation is the same to and fro, in which case you can use a baseline of 1 round-trip per day per regular occupant.
Just make sure you baseline matches with whether you are focusing on one-way or round-trips in your survey questions.
Multi-Family Residential Application
At the beginning of the "Bird's Eye View" section the language used referencing the credit's intent states, in part, that its purpose is to "reduce the number of conventional commuting trips made to your building."
In reviewing the credit I can't find any requirement that the commuting be TO your building. The lack of such a requirement, at least in my opinion, leaves the possibility open for the commuting survey to document commuting practices FROM your building, as would be the case with residential applications.
Dan Ackerstein replied Principal, Ackerstein Sustainability, LLC Feb 15 2010
I agree with your conclusion Brittany. In the absence of formal guidance on applying SSc4 to residential buildings, it seems logical to assume that one's point of origin can have as much impact on transportation outcomes as one's destination, and should therefore be considered similarly for EBOMEBOM is an acronym for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance, one of the LEED 2009 rating sytems. purposes. It's an interesting question though.
LEED User Template
Is it appropriate to use the supplied LEED User template for the survey, or is it intended to be a guideline only?
Tristan Roberts replied Editor – LEEDuser, BuildingGreen, LLC Feb 17 2010
Nell, as a member of LEEDuser, you have our permission to use the survey template—and all other Doc Toolkit items we offer—on your project!
It is a guideline in the sense that you should make sure it fits the needs of your project. But it does meet the general credit requirements for a survey.
Quantify Hyrids
I am not finding a way to quantify a hybrid commute. The language indicates there is a value to commuting in a hybrid, but how is that measured?
Nell Boyle replied Mar 17 2010
I beleive I found the anwser, a hybrid commute would count for zero emmissions, correct?
Tristan Roberts replied Editor – LEEDuser, BuildingGreen, LLC Mar 17 2010
Yes, I think you're right. It would not count as a conventional trip, or in other words it counts as "0" in the conventional trip count.
Matthew Macko replied May 19 2010
i believe it is true that not all hybrids count as 0s... From what we've seen, only Prius and Civic/Accord Hybrids fit the bill
Jenny Carney replied Director, YRG sustainability May 20 2010
Matthew - you're right. A hybrid only counts if it has a ACEEE Green Score of 40 or above. Not all hybrids meet this criteria, and some conventional engines do!
Go to the resources section to follow the link to ACEEE's web site.
Moving Target
Hi. I am a graduate student doing my thesis on the feasablity of making a building LEED compliant. The building is a university building with class rooms. There are 40 permanent staff in the building, but hundreds of students. Every semester the students change. How can I do a survey if the students change every semester? Thanks for any help.
Dan Ackerstein replied Principal, Ackerstein Sustainability, LLC Feb 22 2010
Mark - Flip over to the bottom of page 29 of the EBOMEBOM is an acronym for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance, one of the LEED 2009 rating sytems.-09 Reference Guide for some helpful guidance on surveying transportation modes in buildings with large transient populations, which a university classroom might indeed be. Also, in many cases, a campus-wide transportation study can be applied to all buildings on the campus - many university campuses perform just these types of studies each year to track transportation performance.
Mark Westover replied Feb 24 2010
Thank you.
LEED EBOM Transportation Commuting Survey
I am working with a client on LEED EBOMEBOM is an acronym for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance, one of the LEED 2009 rating sytems. 2009 project located in an urban area. The building has over 2,051 FTEs and multiple tenants. We don't have access to email addresses for each of the occupants, but do have tenant contacts who can forward information to the tenants. Given the location, we believe more than 75% of the occupants commute via some form other than a high-emitting single-occupancy vehicle. Our challenge is reaching the 80% response rate in order to extrapolate the data for the whole building.
We are looking at conducting the survey using the random sampling approach per the reference guide. However, since we don't have access to tenant's individual names and email addresses, we can't randomly select and contact tenants. We may be able to ask our tenant contacts to distribute the survey to a random group of their employees, however we then have less control of the distribution and return. Alternatively, we could position a team at the elevators and sample every fourth person who enters - although it would be random, we're not sure it would be a truly representative sample of the building population.
Any thoughts on these two methodologies, or others that would be acceptable to the reviewer that we should consider, to achieve the highest return using the random sample approach?
Corinna Kester replied Consultant, Sustainable Buildings and Operations, KEMA Mar 29 2010
Hi Katie -
The second approach you mention - position a team at the elevators and sample every fourth person who enters - will get you the highest return, because you are much less likely to have nonrespondents. As long as all building occupants must pass by the survey location and as long as you have a systematic method for selecting respondents that is not impacted by occupants' transportation method, your sample can reasonably be considered random. The major downside of this approach is that it requires a significant amount of staff time. I have seen this approach successfully utilized by other project teams.
With the first approach you mention - asking your tenant contacts to distribute the survey to a random group of their employees - you are likely to see a significantly lower response rate than with an in-person survey.
Katie Anthony replied Mar 30 2010
Thanks Corinna. I'm glad to hear that you have seen the systematic "elevator approach" work well and be accepted by the LEED reviewers. It should certainly get the client the highest response rate on their survey!
Residential Survey
Can you provide some guidance on how to comply with this credit's requirements for a multi family residential project? Since there is a different occupant population for residential projects compared to the commercial building occupants which Rule 2202 is designed for (some of which do not work such as children, retired individuals, etc.), how do we know which occupant types to include in our survey? Should we use an age cut off? Also, should our survey take into account all trips taken to and from our building, or just those for commuting to and from work? Any guidance would be much appreciated.
Dan Ackerstein replied Principal, Ackerstein Sustainability, LLC Apr 07 2010
Great question Tom, and at this point I don't believe there is a hard and fast answer. I would start with the basic assumption that EBOMEBOM is an acronym for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance, one of the LEED 2009 rating sytems. has to be somewhat limited in scope to 'commuting' behavior, that is, trips to and from the workplace or school. For your building, I would focus the survey on the working population and school-age children, and exclude non-working adults (retirees or stay-at-home parents) and pre-school age children. Obviously, you'll have to make some thoughtful accommodations for various carpool and public transit situations that arise in a residential environment, but I think that if you keep the credit intent in mind while designing your survey, you can get a result that the reviewer will find convincing. Ultimately, LEED 'wants' to award points to residential buildings that genuinely facilitate alternative transportation use, there just isn't an established pathway to do so written down in the Reference Guide.
Methodology for calculating a (7) Seven Day A Week Survey
Hello we are a Convention Center open seven days a week. The instructions given for the survey are for a 5 day week scenario.
How do you figure for a seven day a week scenario.
Please Advise, thank you.
Tristan Roberts replied Editor – LEEDuser, BuildingGreen, LLC Apr 15 2010
The typical methodology assumes a 5-day workweek, but the credit language is more broad, allowing for a more fiexible baseline that is more sutiable to your project. I would establish a baseline that actually makes sense for your project and go from there.
Since the building is currently operating can you use current usage data to establish a baseline?
Jenny Carney replied Director, YRG sustainability Apr 16 2010
Reynaldo,
My opinion is that it would be fine to use a 7-day period for the survey, but if some regular occupants (e.g., workers) only work for some of the days, you'll need to account for that, and adjust the denominator in your percentage trip reduction calculations accordingly.
For example, if 200 people work 5 days a week, and 100 people work 2 days a week on weekends, the base number of one-way trips per week is 2400 trips (200*5*2 + 100*2*2).
You could conduct a survey at the end of the 7-day period that evaluated both the total number of days worked by an individual, AND the modes of transit for each of those days. This would put you in a good situation to perform the calculations.
Matthew Macko replied May 20 2010
Reynaldo,
Look to Page 10 of the SCAQMD's Rule 2202 - it has guidance on the 2 different ways of handling 7 day a week occupants. Essentially you have to sample 5 days when the majority of employees are scheduled to work - there is however other options reflecting the timing of the survey and days when you are allowed to survey like Tristan and Jenny have mentioned.
Conducting a Transportation Survey using "standing by elevators"
There has been much discussion around this topic and after doing some extensive reading (and having been a student of stats) the "randomness" of LEED's guidelines fly in the face of statistical accuracy.
That being said, you have to live with what you've got. My questions are in reference to this same ideal.
In doing the “standing in front of the elevator methodology” to surveying, can you advertise that you will be conducting a LEED Transportation Survey or is that against the rules?
Does it matter what you give out as a teaser - for instance some people like bagels and coffee while others don't and some people don’t like cold weather so giving away a ski vacation might skew results???
One person said, "position a team at the elevators and sample every fourth person who enters - will get you the highest return, because you are much less likely to have non-respondents." I don't understand why sampling every fourth person makes sense...? In order to get the minimum sample respondents we use the formula - (occupants*752)/(occupants+752) in our case we have a sample of 626 (6 entrances and 10+ elevators…). So shouldn’t a team just wait at the elevator bank for a minimum of 4 hours until they have hit their sample size? Shouldn’t the team sample everyone? I understand that some people will not want to respond and therefor counted as SOV drivers as well as others your team just won’t be able to catch as they scoot by (assuming those are not counted at all) but the every four I was confused by. I also wonder about the if… What happens IF we don’t hit our sample after being at the elevator bank for 6+ hours? Must we give up and count the remaining portion of the sample size as SOV drivers?
Appreciate all the help – thanks LEEDuser team!
Jenny Carney replied Director, YRG sustainability May 20 2010
FYI, the "sampling" methodology is mostly derived from the SCAQMD guidelines (not a LEED invention). To try to hit on some of your other questions:
1. Advertising - at the time of the survey it's fine to make it clear what you are doing and why, but you shouldn't do things in advance of the survey that would skew occupants behavior from the norm or incentivize them to misreport their behaviors.
2. Teasers - if you are doing a random sample approach, you need to determine who your targets are independent of giving them a prize. For example, you can set up a free ski trip booth and wait to see who wanders up. You could, though, approach every 10th person and say "I have a survey, and if you are willing to take it I will give you a free ski trip." In this second case, the ski trip may influence whether they answer your questions but, importantly, doesn't influence who is included in the sample population.
3. Sampling vs. asking everyone - if you ask everyone, you are by definition no longer using the sampling approach. I think the suggest to ask every fourth person was just an example of a sampling technique that works, not a declaration that focusing on every forth person is a magical strategy that will get you the highest response rate. I've seen teams ask every next person that comes through the door, which is fine too. You have to have some strategy though so you're not just zeroing in on people wearing bike helmets or stepping off the train, though.
Matthew Macko replied May 20 2010
Thanks for your answers
I know that LEED defines very little but uses known standards as reference points. I've also read the entire SCAQMD's multiple guidelines and what I've found in both reading those and talking to them is that the methodology is flawed because you can't both ask for a sample and set sample parameters (i.e. minimum sample size and conditions length of survey).
I get the advertising response - thank you - however I think you meant to say "can't" in regards to the free ski trip booth in the Teasers section... Let me know - a little confusing.
About the sampling - If you ask everyone or every next person, those are virtually the same thing - in fact what is to say that asking every 10 of 11 people would be using a sampling approach. I really want to get at the heart of the issue here which is that asking everyone vs. asking every fourth uses the same approach. In a big building with volumes of people there is no way you are going to get everyone so inherently you aren't asking everyone but you are doing what you can to get responses from the audience as they pass by in haste. The people you ask will be random because on any given day, who walk through the door next is completely random. The problem lies in the guidelines to get the sampling number. The 752 number seems arbitrary and at the end of the day no statistical z score or t score statistical extrapolation of data will be used to understand the population accurately. It makes sense to set rules because you don't want to have teams just asking sweaty bikers. I'll probably end up moving forward with doing what we can to not skew by staying there until we get our sample (to avoid losing non respondents to SOV) and somehow ensuring we get a sample as opposed to a sample that looks exactly like the population...
Dan Ackerstein replied Principal, Ackerstein Sustainability, LLC Aug 05 2010
Matthew - I think you've accurately identified some of the compromises USGBC necessarily had to make in balancing the statistical validity of the survey with the realities of asking non-expert facility folks to conduct a survey of this sort. There's a perfect statistical approach, there's an easy painless survey approach, and somewhere in between is where we tried to land. To your points - the key to the 'advertising' issue is creating response bias. If you advertise the fact that you're going to conduct a survey next week, you influence behavior in favor of the surveyed activity. In the same way, elsewhere I saw it noted that the elevator approach would eliminate nonrespondents - this is only true if the few people who refuse to answer survey questions (I've performed elevator surveys at a number of buildings, and there are always folks who just don't want to talk to you) don't know the subject of the survey. The minute you tell them its a survey about LEED or alternative transportation, you've created a response bias and therefore have to count 'refusers' as nonrespondents. Alternately, you can ask them if they'll take a survey without noting the subject matter, and if they say 'no' you don't have to include them as there is no bias inherent in their response. As to your question about every fourth person vs every person - I agree that its arbitrary. I think its fine to ask every person entering because arrival time at the building is as randomizing a variable as any other. One might argue that in some buildings there is a demographic element to arrival time and its something to be consider, but in most buildings its not meaningful. My advice is to show up early and fill out surveys until you hit your magic number, then do a few more for good measure. And on that note, I can tell you that the 752 figure is by no means arbitrary; its based on establishing a confidence interval that the USGBC felt comfortable with in terms of extrapolating data to the whole building population. We certainly could have done more in this regard, but again, we didn't want this to be an exercise in statistical analysis - just a manageable one in information gathering. Hope that helps - good luck with your survey.
EBOM SS Credit 4 Alternative Commuting Transportation
My client has been LEED Credit-mapped by another party. They had conducted an informal commute survey taking option 3. The survey questionnaire asked for which mode of transport the staff used for "most of the week (3-4 days)" and not 5 days in the week, therefore does not have a daily tally. They got a good response the last time (~75%) and had favorable results since the project is highly accessible to mass transport and located near major thoroughfares, but the client is not too keen on conducting a new survey given that the survey was done fairly recently, and feedback will not likely be as good.
Will the survey be sufficient? - it is able to clearly indicate how many are driving alone to work but there is no 'per day' tally. What other alternatives are there other than conducting a new survey?
Jason Franken replied LEED Consultant, YRG sustainability Jun 02 2010
Pablo, it's hard to say without seeing a copy of the survey language, but it doesn't seem like this survey meets the required SCAQMD standards. It sounds like the survey that your client distributed asked respondents to summarize their commuting habits for a 3-4 day period. The language should not ask the respondent how they "usually" get to work or request details on their "typical" or "average" commuting habits; the survey must clearly request how the respondent actually commuted to work each day for a specific, consecutive 5-day period. I'd recommend that you take a look at the sample survey in the Documentation Toolkit section of SSc4 to get an idea of the compliant format. Then, if the client agrees, you should conduct a new survey to meet the credit requirements. Be up-front with the building occupants; explain what LEED certification means and why it's important to the building owner/operator and acknowledge that the first survey didn't collect all of the required information. You mentioned that they had a very good response rate the first time; if you like, rather than distributing the survey to the entire building population, you may use Approach 2 (described on pp. 28-29 of the Reference Guide) and survey a randomly-selected, statistically representative sample of the building population. If you get a response rate better than 80%, you can extrapolate the survey results to the entire building population. This approach may reduce the sting of having to do the survey over again.
Pablo Fortunato Suarez replied Principal ESD Consultant/Architect, GreenArc Sustainable Building & Architecture Jun 03 2010
thank you Jason. regards
Avkash Patel replied Jun 07 2010
Is the sample survey in the Document Toolkit SCAQMD Rule 2202 compliant? If so, would it be alright to just customize it a bit and have my employees fill it out?
Also, I am working on a library project and libraries have many transient visitors and volunteers. Would I just survey the paid employees or do i have to include the volunteers.
Jason Franken replied LEED Consultant, YRG sustainability Jun 07 2010
Yes, Avkash, the sample survey meets the credit requirements, so you can customize and use on your project. You can get some additional tips on creating/distributing the survey at http://www.leeduser.com/strategy/doing-alternative-commuting-transportat.... The best way to show credit compliance is to compile your survey results in an Excel sheet, very clearly showing the daily commuting for each mode, and making sure to adjust correctly for any carpoolers. For a library project, you only need to survey your regular occupants; this would definitely include your paid full-time employees and may include the volunteers depending on the length/timing of their shifts. If a volunteer is arriving between 6 am- 10 am and spending the entire day at the building, they should probably be included in the survey. If they are just coming in at random times throughout the day for shorter shifts, they can probably be excluded.
Hotel Projects- Guest Occupancy
Should we include guest occupancy of hotels in this credit calculation? If yes then how can be calculate FTEs for guest occupancy in hotels.
Jason Franken replied LEED Consultant, YRG sustainability Jun 10 2010
No, the survey only needs to be distributed to your regular building occupants, which in this case would include hotel staff, housekeeping, etc. Transient guests and visitors do not need to be surveyed. Take a look at our strategy guide at http://www.leeduser.com/strategy/doing-alternative-commuting-transportat... to get other tips on creating and completing your commuting survey.
The survey timing mentioned
The survey timing mentioned to conduct the survey says 'within a slot
of four hours' during the day.In case of a hotel,where the employees
work in shifts, can the survey take employees coming for the evening shifts?In a case wher half of the employee population comes to work during evening hours,not including them in the survey reduces the credit score,even if the employees are using alternative transport like shuttle bus etc. for commuting.Please advice how to go forward with the survey.Thank You.
Jason Franken replied LEED Consultant, YRG sustainability Jun 21 2010
This requirement about when building occupants are arriving at the project building is only applicable if you are conducting an in-person survey using surveyors posted at building entrances. If you are distributing your survey online or on paper, simply provide it to all shifts and ask them how they commuted to work each day for a 5-day period. You may want to add a question asking whether they are on the AM shift or PM shift for internal tracking purposes. If you choose to conduct the survey in-person, you will need to make arrangements to have the surveyors available during the separate arrival windows for the employees on the AM and PM shifts.
regular contracted service providers
a client has 'regular contracted service providers' who are in charge of cleaning, maintenance, landscaping, cashiering, food preparation, data entry, etc. they regularly report for work and have regular daily tasks (some have regular workspaces and most have regular lounge areas), and work longer hours and more days in a work week. are they eligible for the survey?
they are not temporary employees, or seasonal employees since they have regular services to provide.
the gray area would be if they are independent contractors since the contract is between my client's company and them, and although they are not on my client's payroll, the service they provide is on the 'regular' expense and their regular service is a necessity in the year-round operations of the client's facility, not on an interim basis.
Jason Franken replied LEED Consultant, YRG sustainability Jun 22 2010
I think your last comment is the one that makes the decision for me: the service that these contracted employees provide is a necessity in the year-round operations of the client's facility. If they are part of the daily operations of the building, they should definitely be included as part of the transportation survey. The distinction is based on whether they are coming to the building on a regular basis to work a full-day; an example of a contracted service provider who would not be included in the survey might be a pest management provider. They visit the building on an intermittent basis and usually are not putting in a full work day on the premises.
Number of Regular Building Occupants for a 2 shift facility
I am working with a building that has 2 shifts of workers. The first shift is 837 and the second shift is 55. For the number of regular building occupants can I use the 837 number or do I have to use 892 (837+55) as my baseline?
Jason Franken replied LEED Consultant, YRG sustainability Jul 01 2010
David, you should use the full number of FTEFull-time equivalent (FTE) represents a regular building occupant who spends 8 hours a day (40 hours a week) in the project building. Part-time or overtime occupants have FTE values based on their hours per day divided by 8 (or hours per week divided by 40). Transient Occupants can be reported as either daily totals or as part of the FTE. Residential occupancy should be estimated based on the number and size of units. Core and Shell projects should refer to the default occupancy table in the Reference Guide appendix. All occupant assumptions must be consistent across all credits in all categories. (892) and very clearly explain how you set up and distributed your survey in order to reach the entire building population (or a statistically significant sample) while taking into account the fact that two shifts are arriving at different times of day.
Telecommuting & Energy Star
If our strategy for this credit involves mandating telecommuting for every employee once a week, which will reduce commuting trips by 20%, will we be required to adjust our Energy Star inputs (fewer # of workers on main shift), thereby reducing our Energy Star score?
Conversely, if telecommuting decreases electrical consumption (which in theory it should), can we potentially increase our energy star score and get the alt transport credits at the same time, just like that?
Dan Ackerstein replied Principal, Ackerstein Sustainability, LLC Jul 28 2010
Yes and yes Cody. EAp2 is about how much energy your building uses, controlling for variables like square footage and occupancy. If your occupancy is reduced for any reason, even a good reason like telecommuting, your EStar score should reflect that reality. And if your telecommuting program reduces building energy consumption at the same time it reduces transportation energy consumption, you've just doubled down on carbon emissions reductions. Nice job! Also please note, that although your EStar score may go down, occupancy is one of many variables - I wouldn't expect it to drop precipitously due to a 20% reduction. Particularly because the number of PC's and other variables will likely remain constant. At the same time, energy consumption decreases won't be automatic - you'll have to be careful about behavioral elements like turning off computers when employees are gone to maximize benefits. Good luck with the whole endeavor.
Cody Gale replied Denver Green Buildings Jul 28 2010
Thanks for the info Dan.
LEED & SCAQMD et al
We are conducting another survey for compiance w/ LEED requirements. I noticed some discrepancies between the SCAQMD requirements (including Average Vehicle Ridership Survey Form) and the LEED requirements (including the sample form). By right we should be following LEED but just to clear any doubts, I'm posting this set of inquiries as there may be recent rulings pertainining to these so I'd like to ask for some clarification in order to find out which ruling will govern in the pursuit of this credit. Most though are just questions and not referring to any discrepancy.
1) Firstly (for a survey of 100% of occupants): the SCAQMD procedure states a minimum of 60% respondents for the survey to be valid while the LEED manual states no minimum.
2) For the survey questionnaire:
a) Would there be a significant difference between identifying carpool and vanpool entries if within the survey there is another indicator on the number of persons sharing the ride? b) Is riding by cab or a chauffer driven car considered the same as carpooling to include the driver in the number of persons in the vehicle? If not how do we categorize this mode and how will persons going via this mode be counted? 3) The sample asks that time to commute to work be indicated if it is outside 6am to 10am, whereas the SCAQMD form just asks the "time you began work". Is this time of commute significant in the survey and determining the points for this credit considering most report regular hours?
Hoping for your assesment of these queries.
Vacation/Sick Days
We have conducted an option 3, approach 2 (sample survey) for our project. The reference guide notes that if an occupant reports being absent due to vacation or a sick day, that it should accounted for but not included in the results. If we understood this correctly, does this result in a reduced the baseline (sample size) by the appropriate number of vacation/sick days and not assign a number in our survey results?
For example: a sample size of 300 surveys is needed. Out of the 300 surveys conducted, 10 respondents reported vacation/sick days. The sample size is now reduced for 290. Now we compare the survey results with the new sample size? Is this correct? Note: occupants are assumed to go to and from the building in the same manner.
Dan Ackerstein replied Principal, Ackerstein Sustainability, LLC Aug 30 2010
You've got it Andy - exactly right.
ACEEE Updated LE/FE Green Score Document
The link to the excel spreadsheet for LE/FE vehicles as defined by ACEEE is dated. Here is the 2010 link: http://www.greenercars.org/Leed%20Vehicles%202010.xls
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