LEED-EBOM 2012 To Focus on Performance
February 10, 2012
Today's tip of the day is about some of the major changes to look forward to when LEED EBOM is released in its newest version this fall. All of the LEED rating systems are getting overhauls, but it's the Operations and Maintenance rating system that has some of the biggest changes.
Most importantly, each LEED-EBOM credit and prerequisite is being rewritten to include two parts, an Establishment part and a Performance part. Facility managers will have to comply with both parts in order to earn the points for the credit.
The establishment portion of each credit is, as the U.S. Green Building Council explains, "static and foundational." It "establishes" the foundation for ongoing performance in the building, including strategies like installing meters and developing policies and procedures. As an example, in the draft version of LEED-EBOM, the Establishment portion of the Water Efficiency Credit for "additional landscape water use" requires users to calculate the baseline of current landscape water use and install a submeter to measure it.
The Performance portion of each credit, as its name implies, ensures that the Establishment portion of the credit is carried out in the real world. The Performance part of a credit is "dynamic and recurring," and includes strategies such as surveys, audits, and ongoing tracking. As an example, for the water efficiency credit mentioned early, to comply with the Performance part of the credit, facility managers must calculate the metered water use, and then are awarded 1 point if that use is 30 percent below a baseline of the average of the last three years, and 2 points if use is 40 percent below that baseline.
One of the goals of the dual-part credits in LEED-EBOM is to help reduce redundancy in the recertification process. Facility managers can more easily track each performance requirement and only submit that information for recertification, as opposed to have to start essentially from scratch to recertify.
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