BuildingGreen LLC last month announced the release of a report examining the costs of meeting the standards of the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for New Construction (LEED-NC) rating system.
For the first time, cost information on hundreds of specific technologies and approaches that teams are using to earn points in the current LEED-NC rating system is available in a credit-by-credit format, BuildingGreen stated. The report is entitled "The Cost of LEED: A Report on Cost Expectations to Meet LEED-NC v2009."
"While previously published studies have taken an aggregated approach, trying to predict overall cost impact of LEED from looking at previous projects, this report draws from the resources and experience of veteran cost estimators to present the cost of specific measures a team is likely to consider," according to the firm.
Added Tsoi/Kobus & Associates' Stephen Oppenheimer, coauthor of the report: "The goal of this report was to get a handle on the ways in which LEED credits can be achieved and to understand the cost implications of those actions within a building project. We were not interested in generalizations of what a LEED Silver project might cost. We wanted much more detail than that."
BuildingGreen believes the result is a report that helps a team better understand the implications of LEED on the cost of its own particular project. The report features a list of "standard" approaches compared to "high performance" options in addition to cost premiums for those options. "Compiled by a team of seasoned practitioners who have collaborated on LEED-certified buildings, this report benefits from real-world experience in identifying the construction cost areas that matter."
The report is the work of Oppenheimer and Sara Mills-Knapp of Tsoi/Kobus & Associates, Inga Lenova and Robert Andrews of AHA Engineers with cost estimating by James Vermeulens and Craig Chiarelli of Vermeulens Cost Consultants. Their efforts were supported by Nadav Malin and Jim Newman of BuildingGreen.
A spokesperson for BuildingGreen did not immediately respond to GBI's request for additional details.
The 47-page report is available for $49.
