Entry 6: Leed Certification

Hello readers. This entry covers the meeting from Tuesday September 26^th 2006. It was the first meeting after our project had agreed on a GMP, Guaranteed Maximum Price, with Bovis Lend Lease for around 1.95 million. The main points from this meeting were then to discuss the next steps now that the project has a green light, and also update us on our projected LEED Certification Status.

For those of you who don’t know, LEED (Leading in Energy and Environmental Design). Our representative in the project, Isaac Panzarella, provided a presentation on comparing the original goals with the current status of building the Smart House. To give you a brief overview of LEED certification, a building must meet a range of points earned from various categories such as Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources, Indoor Environmental Quality, and Innovation and Design Process. The total amount of points you can earn categorizes the level of certification ranging from certified, to silver, to gold, and finally to platinum. If you walk into the atrium at FCIEMAS, you can see a very large plaque on the wall by the windows like the picture below showing a Silver LEED-NC certification. Our original goal for SmartHouse was to achieve Platinum status, which is a very difficult task to achieve with a limited budget. After reviewing all of the items on the list, we were able to speculate that the SmartHouse will achieve a gold certification if not higher.

As far as the current status on Construction, we concluded that shop drawings need to be approved by Frank Harmon Architects and a permit needs to be given by the city of Durham. Here are some estimated time points according to Bovis; Expect to see some physical presence starting around Monday, October 2^nd (which includes basic cleaning of the site – i.e. removing shrubs). Then, by the end of October, the foundation should be underway and the framing is expected to be up by mid. December. Remember to be aware that these dates are subject to change.