Green Building: A Real Estate Revolution? University Of Michigan Banks On LEED

Part 1 of 2 Parts

Green Building: A Real Estate Revolution? University Of Michigan Banks On LEED


Part 2 of 2 Parts

Critics Say LEED Program Doesn't Fulfill Promises

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In 1993 the U.S. Green Building Council got its start. The USGBC created the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, program.

Hoffman gives the council a lot of credit for helping create demand. "They created a cachet around the LEED certification," he says. "And they got people to want to do this as a marketing pitch - and I think that was really a stroke of genius to get a rather inertial industry to start to shift."

Marketing genius indeed. It seems analogous to the quality cert movement, but the twists are interesting:

1)
That LEED certification is based on predicted energy savings, not actual, seems like an obvious PAR. Imagine if ISO 9001 certification was based on predicted system quality, not actual. But would requiring periodic audits kill current owner enthusiasm?

2)
This is a product certification. But buildings are all one-time products and they are perhaps even more susceptible to quality problems than they are to environmental and energy ones. Seems to me that there is an opportunity for quality-folk to emulate this "environmental and energy" building (read "product") certification with a parallel one for Quality (and, why not, perhaps even H&S). If this was combined with periodic 3rd party auditing, imagine the market size!

Problem = Opportunity