Thanks to Anica Landreneau, director of Sustainable Consulting, for this guest post.
Greenbuild is always a great time to meet up with clients, peers and industry leaders while learning about the latest developments in LEED certification, product manufacturing and performance standards. I went to Greenbuild to do all of those things, but also to speak on a panel about the District of Columbia’s adoption of the International Green Construction Code (IgCC). My fellow panelists were Fulya Kocak, director of sustainability at Clark Construction, and Dave Epley, green building and sustainability coordinator for the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA).
In 2006, Washington, DC, passed the Green Building Act requiring publicly-funded construction to be LEED-certified at the Silver level (or Gold for schools) starting in 2008, and privately-funded construction to be LEED certified starting in 2012. At that time there was no green building code so LEED was being mandated or incentivized in jurisdictions all over the US.
U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, DC
The funny thing about LEED is that it’s not designed to be enforced like a code. LEED is a flexible rating system with credits in multiple categories, many of which have numerous compliance paths. Additionally, certification must be validated by a third party: the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI). A jurisdiction has no control over whether a building is eligible for LEED certification or deemed in compliance with the LEED criteria. It also means code reviewers and building inspectors would have to become LEED experts in order to determine if a project would likely meet LEED criteria at the time of construction permitting and building inspections (long before the actual certification is issued).
In 2008, HOK helped support the implementation of the Green Building Act by developing processes, tools, resources and training for DCRA, the Department of General Services (DGS) and other agencies.
Constitution Square in Washington, DC
The benefit of the Green Building Act’s long lead time was that it gave the private sector an opportunity to adopt LEED before it was mandated. Many HOK clients decided they didn’t want the ‘last brown building on the block’ and began to immediately aim for LEED certification on their existing projects. Coupled with the competitive spirit of developers, it quickly became a race to achieve higher and higher levels of LEED certification until most new Class A buildings were pursuing Platinum.
This overwhelming acceptance and endorsement of LEED in Washington, DC, shows that the market was able to adapt very quickly. Green building became the only option in a short amount of time. Therefore, there was no longer a premium to build green – it became the new standard. The AEC industry gained expertise in sustainability and garnered robust experience during this time. The industry-wide adoption of LEED certification positively affected populations that otherwise might not have had access to green building strategies, such as affordable housing and schools.
Washington, DC, currently boasts more than 100 million square feet of LEED-certified space per capita, indicating the Green Building Act was wildly successful in creating a greener city.
DC Consolidated Forensic Laboratory in Washington, DC
Despite the success of mandating LEED certification city-wide, once the IgCC 2012 was released, the city decided that a green code would ultimately be a better mandatory standard than LEED.
A Green Technical Advisory Group (TAG) – including myself and HOK senior specifications writer Joe Winters – was convened to review the 2012 IgCC in-depth and adapt it for use in DC.
Once again leading the nation in the area of green building, Washington, DC, was the first city to adopt the IgCC in its entirety. There were three public comment periods during which TAG invited industry groups such as the District of Columbia Building Industry Association (DCBIA) and the Apartment and Office Building Association (AOBA) to sit with us to review comments and answer questions. As a result of these efforts to include the affected parties, the DC version of IgCC was passed by the District Council in March of 2014 without a hearing – a rare occurrence for any code!
Now that the IgCC is available, Washington, DC, will likely amend its Green Building Act to remove the LEED mandate for private construction, but keep it in place for public projects. The city decided to allow projects pursuing LEED to use that as an alternative compliance path for IgCC. It is likely that even if the mandatory LEED provision goes away for the private sector, many will still pursue certification for marketing reasons. After all, who likes to brag about meeting code?
