Major Tenant Build-out During Certification Period

Major Tenant Build-out During Certification Period

Kevin,

The minimum building occupancy for LEED Minimum Program Requirements was lowered to 50% last fall, so you should be fine as far as the LEED requirements are concerned. The USGBC has provided some guidance documentation on their website for how projects with lower occupancy (but still over 50%) should go about attempting various credits where occupancy matters.

To directly answer your question, I think the biggest potential challenges with your project are related to EAp2 and your Energy Star score:

1. You need to determine how to appropriately time-average your building occupancy over the 12-month period for Energy Star purposes. I'd recommend that you contact the Energy Star Portfolio Manager customer service center to learn more about their protocol. When completing your documentation, make sure to include a comprehensive narrative explaining how you derived the occupancy inputs for Portfolio Manager.

2. As you may know, construction fit-outs can be really energy intensive. You should think about how having these activities fall within your performance period might affect your building's Energy Star score , especially if your building currently has a score that is close to the compliance threshold of 69. It may be worthwhile to shift your 12-month performance period to begin after these new tenants have occupied their spaces.