November 13, 2009

FOCUS | Green building

What do you want from a green building?

PETER KENTER

correspondent

Mention ‘green building’ to people employed in the construction industry and you’ll conjure up all sorts of images — but rarely the same one.

Even green building standards that attempt to codify what we mean by green building stress different goals and values.

“We shouldn’t focus as much on what these standards tell us to do, as what we actually want from a green building,” says Mark Lucuik, Principal and Corporate Lead, Green Buildings and Sustainability, Morrison Hershfield Consulting Engineers in Ottawa and a member of the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) board of directors.

“Building owners should learn about the benefits offered by a green building, then decide what’s important to them.”

In addition to the most common green building rating systems, Canadian builders can choose from 30 more green building rating systems that continue to evolve. The two most common are Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) standards.

LEED, administered in Canada by the CaGBC currently offers an expanding roster of standards.

LEED Canada for New Construction 2009 offers special guidance for multi-unit residential buildings, campus and multiple buildings and leased tenant space.

“The biggest changes in the new standard introduced this year are adjusting the scoring from 70 credits to 110 credits,” says Lucuik. “There’s been an adjustment to weighting and a redistribution of points so that a given credit’s point value more accurately reflects its potential to either mitigate the negative or promote the positive environmental impacts of a building.”

LEED for Core and Shell is a specification for office buildings and similar to LEED for New Construction.

LEED for Commercial Interiors is another rating.

LEED Canada Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance (EBOM), focuses on building operations and maintenance. New in June 2009, the standard adapts the US Green Building Council (USGBC) 2009 rating system, which offers similar scoring and weighting as LEED Canada for New Construction 2009.

LEED Homes, a streamlined rating system for residential low-rise developers, released March 2009.

LEED Canada Neighbourhood Development (ND), is scheduled for 2010, “is a very different LEED system, including stronger consideration of social impacts and transportation,” says Lucuik. Of particular note is the LEED Canada Durability Credit, MR 8.

“Under this credit, based on CSA Standard S478-95 (2001), items that are costly to repair must have a service life of half the building life.”

“This credit relies on tables that clearly display the designed service life of all building components and helps to document the quality assurance process.”

BOMA provides standards for energy and environmental performance of existing buildings based on accurate, independently verified information.

In 2008, BOMA BESt (Building Environmental Standards) integrated and took over from Go Green Best Practices and Go Green Plus.

“The program has now certified 800 buildings across Canada, double the number certified at the same time a year ago.”

BOMA BESt currently offers four levels:

• BOMA BESt Level 1, indicating that a building has met all BOMA Go Green best practices.

• BOMA BESt Level 2 certified buildings also have a score of 70-79 per cent on the Go Green Plus assessment.

• BOMA BESt Level 3 certified buildings score 80-89 per cent on Go Green Plus.

• BOMA BESt Level 4 certified buildings score over 90 per cent on Go Green Plus.

“Regardless of which standard applies to your building, use the services of an accredited building sciences specialist,” says Lucuik.

“A building is a complex system, and we need to understand the relationship of each component with the rest of the building. You can’t successfully develop green building components in isolation from the integrated system.”

Lucuik spoke at the recent Building Envelope Solutions Conference in Toronto.

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