Blog Archive: August 2010

John Goldwyn, Lisya Sullam and I recently returned from a site visit in Montenegro. We were very impressed with the atmosphere, natural beauty and architectural heritage of this country as well as with the great site we have to develop. But the most incredible experience we had was conducting our design charrette in a car while driving at high speeds through sinuous mountains along the coast!

Upon arriving at our destination, we presented three sketches that we had produced during the drive, and everyone was really excited with the ideas we came up with. The combination of beautiful surroundings and the speed of our travel certainly inspired us and contributed to a very dynamic result.

This recently announced move changes the practice that has been in place since early 2009, following inconsistencies and poor service that have been frustrating to LEED project teams.

All I can say to this is, "It's about time!"

GBCI was spun off from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in 2008 to run the LEED certification process, as well as the accreditation of LEED professionals. In turn, GBCI hired outside "Certification Bodies," or CBs, to perform the LEED reviews, while it managed the overall process. Now, GBCI is taking over those reviews directly.

Certification for our Bardessono project stretched out over a year, and we hit a few snags with the review team. We now know that our review team was a CB, or Certification Body, which may explain some of the issues we ran into. Clarifications, email arguments, reissuing documents that were apparently misplaced by the review team … all these led to a lot of frustration and delays. Our LEED consultant/administrator had to write and call several times to find out exactly where we were in the process. In the end, we earned Platinum certification for our project and for our client; but, hopefully, the process will be less arduous in the future.