How we can be helpful with LEED

As LEED becomes more ingrained in the world of design and construction, our involvement has changed. Initially, I would get phone calls asking me about what we could do to help with gaining points and occassionally a question about what credits we can help obtain but now I am seeing a shift.

There are several LEED-AP's in San Diego that are working on their second, third, fourth or even more LEED projects. These grizzled veterans as I call them, know the ropes and know what they are looking for during their projects. Yesterday, I met with a LEED-AP who is in the midst of a project and it came out that they are not going to go after the GreenGuard Indoor Air Quality credit. Of course, I asked why and asked if I could show some options that would meet performance, price, quality and Greenguard certification so they could achieve that point.

A few weeks ago a RFP/RFQ came out that asked our company to provide an on staff LEED - AP. We have not seen that before. Additionally, the RFP/RFQ asked us to identify which credits we could contribute to for the project. This required a pretty good amount of knowledge of what products are relevant to what credits and how the whole synergy works in the LEED process. Again, the project team had identified which credits were possible and which credits they were going to pursue. We took that checklist and married up our information and knowledge.

One of the biggest services we provide is knowledge. We see manufacturer's reps everyday, we hear about product attributes everyday and we have the horsepower to weed through the information to find the relevant meat for the LEED teams. Half the battle of getting through green building is knowing what you are doing.