Best Practices for Achieving Green Certifications
The world of sustainable design and green building certifications changes fast. New products and technologies come to the market on a regular basis. Codes, funding programs, and rating system requirements evolve every few years to keep pushing the bar higher. If you are a multifamily housing developer, how do you keep up with the green building process? The building you built five years ago may not be able to achieve the same level of performance in 2025!
Even though the systems and standards may keep changing, the surest path to success on a project is to have a solid process in place for the design and construction team to follow. Partner’s approach to green certifications advocates for an integrated team to be able to address various aspects of sustainability, from sites, transportation, energy, water, materials, air quality, wellness, and more. Partner’s key is an integrated team and ensuring that all team members, from the architect, engineers, and contractors, all understand what the project is trying to achieve.
Based on over a decade of providing green building certifications for multifamily and commercial projects, Partner’s best practices for an optimized green building process include the following activities.
- Know your requirements – identify any green/energy requirements tied to funding sources, city approvals, future financing (re-financing), and other “reach” goals to qualify for incentives and rebates.
- Start early – establish a basis of design to map out what needs to be included in the project scope to meet all the requirements.
- Model outcomes – test out different scenarios for systems vs costs, energy use, ghg emissions, certification thresholds to determine the most cost-effective pathway forward.
- Think holistically – integrate sustainability across the design, engineering, and construction teams so it is not just an “add-on”, and all requirements can still be fulfilled even if value-engineering, and substitutions occur later in the timeline.
- Document it – make sure all requirements and information needed for project execution is included in the plans and specs to minimize RFIs and improve communications and coordination across all parties.
- Test it – conduct regular inspections and performance testing of the project to ensure that the as-built conditions match the contract documents and fulfill all the project requirements. Codes and certifications are often reliant on final verification by a 3rd party and the project must do more than show commitments during the design phase.
- Management and tracking – develop key performance indicators (KPIs) through the operations and management of the property to ensure ongoing energy and water efficiency, renewable energy generation, and maintenance best practices to keep operations optimized.
We have implemented this approach for the hundreds of LEED, GreenPoint Rated, ENERGY STAR, Enterprise Green Communities, and Green Globes projects we have helped to get certified. For projects that can adhere to these best practices, Partner has found that the cost and schedule impacts associated with green buildings can be minimal and performance levels for sustainability can be greatly elevated.
Approaching projects with an integrated team and process greatly increased the communication of all the project’s requirements, how those items get implemented into the documentation, and how the design gets executed during the construction phase. Each piece is equally important and buy-in from all team members is critical. The feedback loop that results from these best practices can result in the delivery of high-performance buildings that can achieve the top tiers of green building certifications and have a reduced impact on the environment and associated energy, water, and carbon metrics.
Contact Partner Energy’s experienced sustainability professionals if you have any questions or want to learn more about achieving green certifications for your properties.
