Required Signatories in LEED Online Forms

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Required signatory imageUSGBC is offering a spreadsheet, called the LEED 2009 Form Data Matrix, which offers a treasure trove of information, including:

  • Linked elements
  • Linked uploads
  • Linked tables
  • Credit resources
  • Required signatories

For every LEED 2009 rating system.

If you have any comments, questions, or interesting things you've noticed in the spreadsheet, comment below!

Go to the LEED 2009 Form Data Matrix

43 Comments

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Ivy Glasgow Project Architect DLR Group
Mar 28 2013
LEEDuser Member
27 Thumbs Up

Inaccurate data from USGBC?

Is it just me or is the Matrix / spreadsheet offered for download from USGBC inaccurate? All I am trying to do is figure out exactly how many places the client needs to sign, so she can just go in there and do it once. All the templates on the project are V04. The spreadsheet seems to indicate that few owner signatures are needed if you are using V04 forms, but that's not what I'm seeing on the actual forms.

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Devani PERERA Green Building Consultant, ELAN Mar 29 2013 LEEDuser Member 99 Thumbs Up

Hello,
Are you sure that all your forms are V04? It is possible that some of your templates are still using an older version, thus requiring the owner signature. The matrix indicates the latest form available for the different guides.

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Tristan Roberts LEED AP BD+C, Editorial Director – LEEDuser, BuildingGreen, Inc. Mar 29 2013 LEEDuser Moderator

For what it's worth, I understand that USGBC has tried to reduce the number of required signatories with each new version of the forms.

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Omer Kalafatoglu Founder EcoBuild
Aug 27 2012
LEEDuser Member
33 Thumbs Up

Confirmation of Agent's Authority

Hello,
The project I am working on has a shared land and owners have an agreement with a contractor to build a residential LEED building. At the end of the project, the land owners will have the ownership of the half of the units and the contractor will have the rest of the units. Whose signature I should get on the subject form as an owner?
Thanks,

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David Sheridan LEED Specialist, USGBC Aug 28 2012 LEEDuser Member 178 Thumbs Up

Omer, MPR 6 (on PIf1) is an Owner commitment to share water and energy information. That commitment is for the entire project. One of the owners could be authorized by the others to act as agent for the group. Then, when the project is certified, the Owner must sign an Energy and Water Data Release Agreement. Assuming that this information will be provided by the two separate owners, it would be appropriate for each of the Owners to commit to share water and energy data from their respective portions of the project.

You can find the Agency agreement on LEED Online under the Legal tab.

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Omer Kalafatoglu Founder, EcoBuild Aug 28 2012 LEEDuser Member 33 Thumbs Up

Thank you for your response Dave,
I just want to clarify.
This is the name of the form that I found in the Legal Tab
CONFIRMATION OF AGENT’S AUTHORITY
Till the certification is done I only need an agreement with the representative of the owners. When the project is certified, I need to collect the owner's signature of each unit for the Energy and Water Usage Data. There are 59 units in the building. When the construction is done, I need to collect 59 signatures?
Thanks,

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David Sheridan LEED Specialist, USGBC Aug 28 2012 LEEDuser Member 178 Thumbs Up

I thought of this as I was writing my comment, and I figured you would get back to me if it turned out that you have a great many owners. So each unit will be owned by a separate owner? Will there be a co-op association or something like that to take on the energy and water reporting function? As a practical matter, how will the data be accumulated?

These are 'food for thought' questions for now. Look at the MPR 6 requirement and think of how the owner group might best handle aggregating and reporting the building performance. When you get to the project certified stage you can have an entity established to serve the purpose.

You're right: for now you just need an Owner designated in LEED Online. There are a number of places where the Owner must log in and initial project forms (PI Form 1, for instance).

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David Sheridan LEED Specialist, USGBC Aug 29 2012 LEEDuser Member 178 Thumbs Up

Omer, I thought of something else: If you 'appoint' a single owner representative at the beginning of the project and then change to another owner entity at the end, you will have to change the owner with GBCI. See the Legal tab in LEED Online v3 for Change of Owner Agreement. This is a three-way agreement, among GBCI, the original Owner, and the new Owner. It is handled through the GBCI legal department.
The reason for this complexity is to retain the commitment of the Owner to fulfill MPR 6 following certification.

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Omer Kalafatoglu Founder, EcoBuild Aug 29 2012 LEEDuser Member 33 Thumbs Up

Thank you so much Dave! I think I have a ful understanding now. Thanks again.

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Omer Moltay
Jul 02 2012
LEEDuser Member
2087 Thumbs Up

Sales / Lease Agreement for LEED CS

Our project is claiming credits through a lease agreement that stipulates certain energy efficiency requirements. The text is almost ready and we have used all the requirements in energy modeling, etc. Looking at the PIf4 where we are asked to upload the agreement, it says that it has to be signed by both the developer and the tenant. However, the tenant is not yet identified at this moment, therefore only the developer can sign this document. Any experiences?

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Tristan Roberts LEED AP BD+C, Editorial Director – LEEDuser, BuildingGreen, Inc. Jul 02 2012 LEEDuser Moderator

I would assume this would be accepted, if you note in the narrative why the signature is not available, but I haven't been in this situation so I can't say for sure. I would email GBCI if you want to confirm.

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Kelly Duepner LEED BD+C Christner Inc.
Jun 11 2012
LEEDuser Member
51 Thumbs Up

Signatures after preliminary review

I have a credit pending that the HVAC team member has reviewed and uploaded the requested documentation. This credit was previously signed by the general contractor. Does this same signatory need to resign the form acknowledging this new information, or is the new information okay without resigning the form?

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Emily Catacchio Sustainability Specialist, Wight and Company Jun 20 2012 LEEDuser Moderator

Kelly,

Unless the review team requested the form be resigned I don't think it's required. However, the general contractor may have concerns over having their signature on something they haven't seen, in that case go ahead and have them resign it. 

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Donna Juselis LEED Consultant Commissioning WorCx
May 04 2012
LEEDuser Member
24 Thumbs Up

What to do when an Owner retires

The original Owner of our project with a large university has retired and a new project manager is now assigned as Owner. We have added the new Owner to the project team and marked the original owner as de-activated. Should we change the project owner information on the Registration Details tab and have the new person re-sign all of the credit forms, most of which are already marked Complete?
DJ

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Emily Catacchio Sustainability Specialist, Wight and Company May 08 2012 LEEDuser Moderator

Tom,

For the best way to approach this I would contact GBCI, a phone call would probably get you an answer quickly.

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Kathryn West LEED AP O+M, Guiding Principles Compliance Professional, Energy Ace Mar 29 2013 LEEDuser Member 35 Thumbs Up

I had the same question. The response I got back from GBCI was that the new owner has to re-sign all the forms. Not the answer I was hoping for :)

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Johanna Ofner
May 02 2012
Guest
55 Thumbs Up

Property Manager vs Facility Manager

Most of the signatories required in EBOMEBOM is an acronym for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance, one of the LEED 2009 rating sytems. seem to be the facility manager or owner. For IEQc1.5, however, it asks for the signature of the building engineerA qualified engineering professional with relevant and sufficient expertise who oversees and is responsible for the operation and maintenance of mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems in the project building. or property manager. We don't have anyone on our project team that uses this title. How is property manager different from facility manager? Can we have our facility manager sign off on this credit?

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Mary Petrovich Senior Sustainability Associate Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems
Jan 20 2012
LEEDuser Member
316 Thumbs Up

Reguired signatory completed prior to credit information

In your experience, do reviewers object when the owner signs off on a required signatory before the pertinent credit information is loaded into the form. For example, on the LEED-HC form for SSc5.2, can the owner sign off that "All open space that is counted toward this credit will be preserved for the life of the building" before the specific information about the open space is saved to the form? I ask because the required signatory loads the date stamp.

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Tristan Roberts LEED AP BD+C, Editorial Director – LEEDuser, BuildingGreen, Inc. Feb 17 2012 LEEDuser Moderator

Cassidy, that's a good question and I don't know the answer. I could imagine reviewers having trouble with it, though. Has anyone else experienced this?

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Varunika Bove Green Building Consultant, ELAN, Paris FRANCE Feb 17 2012 Guest 159 Thumbs Up

Hello Cassidy,
I couldnt comment on the LEED-HC but I have had a client sign a form and upload the relevent documents later just for practical reasons. The committement of the client was not going to change but the documents and information to be uploaded were not complete. I had no issue with doing it in that order.
I would think this type of situation comes up often. Hope that helps.
Devani

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Rhonda Merchut Project Architect Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Jan 06 2012
Guest
26 Thumbs Up

Changes to completed credits

If we have not made a submittal for review to USGBC, how do we "unsign" or remove a "complete" checkmark from our credits? Thanks.

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Emily Catacchio Sustainability Specialist, Wight and Company Jan 10 2012 LEEDuser Moderator

Rhonda,

This option is available under the "Credit Information" section. Click the icon that says "In Progress" and the checkmark on the scorecard tab will be removed.

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Varunika Bove Green Building Consultant, ELAN, Paris FRANCE Feb 01 2012 Guest 159 Thumbs Up

The icons "In Prgress" and "Complete" have not been working on our project on LEEDonline. I have sent a feed back and not received a response in two weeks now. Is there anyone who came across this issue on their projects?

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Emily Catacchio Sustainability Specialist, Wight and Company Feb 04 2012 LEEDuser Moderator

Devani,

Are you currently in a review phase? Have you recently recieved review comments?

Your LEED-Online access will be limited during a review. After you recieve review comments, you will need to accept the review before all functionality to LEED-Online will return. 

If neither of these circumstances are an issue, I would reccomend calling GBCI and having someone on the phone replicate and document the issue. They will be able to direct you from there.

Good luck!

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Varunika Bove Green Building Consultant, ELAN, Paris FRANCE Feb 05 2012 Guest 159 Thumbs Up

Hello Emily,
Thanks for your response.
The project is not in review. We are in the process of completing the forms and uploading our documents for a D&C review. I did try calling GBCI on several occasions and have not been able to get connected. Each time I called I was on hold for more than 20 minutes and then when I finally got connected the line cut off.
I hope this gets sorted out soon since we are almost at the end of the project.

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Emily Catacchio Sustainability Specialist, Wight and Company Feb 08 2012 LEEDuser Moderator

Devani,

I have never had that experience calling GBCI. Maybe this is a no-brainer, but are you calling this number 1-800-795-1746? Assuiming you're in the US.

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Varunika Bove Green Building Consultant, ELAN, Paris FRANCE Feb 16 2012 Guest 159 Thumbs Up

Finally! I got a reply to my issue. The Representative from GBCI asked me to run the compatibility tool on internet explorer and it worked. Just in case there are other who have the same issue the procedure to follow is:
1. Click on Tools on your internet explorer
2. Then scroll down till you get to a line compatibility tool.
3. If there is no check saying its ok then you have a problem.
The solution is as easy at click on it and click on ok on the box that appears.
And viola it should work!!

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Tristan Roberts LEED AP BD+C, Editorial Director – LEEDuser BuildingGreen, Inc.
Nov 14 2011
LEEDuser Moderator

LEED 2009 Form Data Matrix

LEEDuser is now linking to the LEED 2009 Form Data Matrix (which is awesome) rather than posting our own spreadsheet as before. Let us know if you have any questions, or if you see anything cool on the spreadsheet.

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Jason Smith erstad ARCHITECTS
Jul 26 2011
LEEDuser Member
149 Thumbs Up

Multiple Owners

What if there are multiple owners for the project? We have downloaded the Agent Authority form, but that just releases a single owner to a single agent. Is there a way to list multiple owners? Thank you for your help.

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Tristan Roberts LEED AP BD+C, Editorial Director – LEEDuser, BuildingGreen, Inc. Nov 13 2011 LEEDuser Moderator

Jason, I would contact GBCI and get their guidance on how to handle this. And please let ius know what you learn.

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Xavi B
Jun 23 2011
LEEDuser Member
1869 Thumbs Up

Design and CxA resposabilities

Hi,
What if I'm the electrical engineer on record, and the CxAThe commissioning authority (CxA) is the individual designated to organize, lead, and review the completion of commissioning process activities. The CxA facilitates communication among the owner, designer, and contractor to ensure that complex systems are installed and function in accordance with the owner's project requirements. for the project?
How can I sign both as CxA and electrical engineer?, since when I was assigned as responsible I was assigned to just one activity.

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Tristan Roberts LEED AP BD+C, Editorial Director – LEEDuser, BuildingGreen, Inc. Nov 13 2011 LEEDuser Moderator

Xavi, how can you be both the CxAThe commissioning authority (CxA) is the individual designated to organize, lead, and review the completion of commissioning process activities. The CxA facilitates communication among the owner, designer, and contractor to ensure that complex systems are installed and function in accordance with the owner's project requirements. and the electrical engineer? EAp1 requires these roles to be independent.

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Tarek Dalati Sustainbility manager CRHI
Mar 08 2011
Guest
747 Thumbs Up

what is meant by required signatory

honestly i m confused by rerquired signatory.

how GBCI knows that the initial provided are really for the client for example.
and is there any document is required to be uploaded to show that the initials are for the person required

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Tristan Roberts LEED AP BD+C, Editorial Director – LEEDuser, BuildingGreen, Inc. Mar 08 2011 LEEDuser Moderator

Tarek, see Jason's comment below about Team Administration. I think this answers some of your questions.

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Peter Kennedy LEED AP, GreenPoint Rater Bright Green Strategies
Feb 17 2011
Guest
470 Thumbs Up

EAp2 v EAc1

It looks to me that the Lighting Designer needs to initial on EAp2, not EAc1 (NC, Option 1 Path).

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Tristan Roberts LEED AP BD+C, Editorial Director – LEEDuser, BuildingGreen, Inc. Feb 17 2011 LEEDuser Moderator

I'll check that out and make the change to the spreadsheet. Thanks for the fact-checking!

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Jason Franken Sustainability Professional
Jan 20 2011
LEEDuser Expert
5093 Thumbs Up

Importance of Team Adminstration Tab in LEED Online

This is a great resource - thanks for providing it! One additional aspect of required signatures is the critical importance of updating the Team Administration tab in LEED Online. In order to have these signed credit forms approved during the review process, you need to make sure to add all relevant project team members to the list of team members in LEED Online. You'll also need to make sure to assign them the proper project role. The key step in this new requirement in LEED Online v3 is that the required signatory must be signed into LEED Online using their own login account when they sign the form. When a Credit Form is signed, the system adds an automatically-generated datestamp to the form that includes the name and project role of the person who actually signed it. If someone tries to sign the form in the place of the required signatory, the system will record that and the review team will note the discrepancy. Even if all of your documentation is perfect, the credit will be marked pending during your application review in order to get the authorized team member to sign the form. Save yourself some time down the road by setting up the Team Administration page early in your project and be sure to train all your team members on the correct way to sign these forms.

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Caroline Hedin Jan 21 2011 LEEDuser Member 582 Thumbs Up

We just discovered that ourselves. We've got an Owner who seems to be averse to using the sight so we sign-in under my name and she types in her initials. Of course, the review team doesn't know this so they've marked all of these credits as pending. Seems logical I suppose.

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Peter Kennedy LEED AP, GreenPoint Rater, Bright Green Strategies Feb 16 2011 Guest 470 Thumbs Up

Thanks for the tip, Jason. We've been scratching our heads for a few days here about why the magic "Y" isn't showing up in a form.

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Jennifer Knocha Assistant, Mack-Cali Realty Corporation May 06 2011 LEEDuser Member 48 Thumbs Up

Okay, but we're a large REIT, doing our LEED application in-house, so there isn't an owner/client per se. Would a designated rep for the owner be appropriate? Could the property manager act as both the PM and the owner?

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Tristan Roberts LEED AP BD+C, Editorial Director – LEEDuser, BuildingGreen, Inc. May 19 2011 LEEDuser Moderator

Yes, if they take on that role within LEED Online.

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Renee Shirey
Jan 20 2011
Guest
2136 Thumbs Up

Stamped dwgs vs req'd LEED documentation signatures

Great spreadsheet!
Multiple licensed/registered professionals can work on a project in the same dicipline, depending on the project. However, only a few individuals stamp the CD set dwgs. Does the professional who signs off on the LEED documentation (because they are most closely related to the info and did the calculations) have to be the same person who stamps the dwg for a discipline (elect/mech/landscape/etc)? Do the reviewers of the LEED documentation see this as a disconnect, or is it a non-issue?

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David Posada Sustainability Manager, GBD Architects Jan 20 2011 LEEDuser Expert 11332 Thumbs Up

It's been a non-issue since, as you point out, there are so many licensed, responsible professionals overseeing work who are not necessarily the same person stamping a particular drawing.

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May 20 2013
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