The Renovation of LEED-EB

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As LEED fever spreads across the United States and abroad, the U.S. Green Building Council hopes to revitalize the LEED for Existing Buildings (LEED-EB) standard, which has been trailing behind its far more popular counterpart for New Construction (LEED-NC). As of July 1, LEED-EB: Operations & Maintenance (LEED-EB:O&M, pronounced "leed-e-bom"), will become the default rating system for existing buildings entering the LEED game.

The implications are significant: if successful, EBOM will give green building the muscle to transform an enormous section of the industry. USGBC Director of Certification Mike Opitz explains that the existing buildings market is much larger than that for new construction. There are about 5 million commercial buildings in the United States. Also, EB registration can be sought at any point in the lifecycle of a building, unlike new constructions which must incorporate LEED from the design and construction phase. By improving the EB system, "we are trying to take the best practices of today and make them the standard practices of tomorrow," says Opitz.

The revised EB framework, introduced earlier this year, aims to remove unattractive prerequisites in the old version while strengthening the focus on water and energy efficiency. Building professionals thinking seriously about shrinking their facilities' footprints welcome the change, especially as environmental programs such as the Clinton Climate Initiative and the C40 Large Cities group gain momentum. All projects registering for Existing Buildings after July 1 must do so under EBOM, while any projects already registered for Version 2.0 before this deadline have the option to upgrade to EBOM or continue certification under Version 2.0.

A Retailored Framework

The first version of LEED-EB was introduced in 2004 to address buildings' overall and daily facility management issues. Despite the environmental advantages and financial incentives offered by the government, the uptake of EB was slower than USGBC hoped. As of June this year, there were only 85 EB certified projects, compared to 1,090 for New Construction. California ranked number one with 18 EB projects.

James Baker, director of facilities management at Armstrong, says "[EB] certification was very challenging to complete." Last June, Armstrong World Industries received EB Platinum rating for its corporate headquarters in Lancaster, PA. The biggest challenge was lack of experience to estimate the resource requirements and timing to earn certification. "We had an in-house facilities team which was very knowledgeable of the building's systems, however [they] already had plenty on their plate to accomplish each day," Baker says.

In addition to the steep learning curve, many other factors discouraged building managers. "[EB] was not a good fit for the existing buildings market," Opitz says, as there was too much carryover from the NC rating system in terms of architectural and design requirements. For example, the Daylight and Views credit in Version 2.0 might call for major window renovations, which was not viable for most owners of occupied buildings. Building managers also complained about onerous prerequisites for commissioning, waste stream audit and mercury in lamps reduction. (All of these were converted to optional credits in EBOM.)

The USGBC started the process to revise EB over a year ago. The new program is not dramatically different but does shift the spotlight from design to facilities and maintenance. Overall it should alleviate the challenges in Version 2.0, according to Kaitlin Regan, marketing manager for green building consultancy CodeGreen. While certification is not effortless, there are more streamlined credits and the requirements and prerequisites are adjusted to fit existing buildings, hopefully making them easier to achieve. In total, EBOM adds seven new credit options "to allow more flexibility for projects to choose credits which are most feasible based on project scope," explains Regan.

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