new standard

"As we've been improving LEED, we've been making it more complex," said Scott Horst, chairman of the LEED Steering Committee in a teleconference with industry participants earlier this summer. "This is about a simplification of the system."

The comment period for the proposed changes has closed and USGBC is now reviewing them, Alice Soulek, VP of LEED Development, tells GlobeSt.com. This week the technical advisory group will be presenting opinions generated from the comment period to the LEED Steering Committee, she reports. Then there will be a second comment period, after which the changes go to ballot. "We are on schedule for a January 2009 release of the standards," she says.

The 10 agencies that USGBC has selected to participate in the LEED certification process is part of a greater initiative by USGBC to scale up its capacity and turnaround time, Soulek says. Right now, LEED project submissions are reviewed by USGBC with the assistance of independently contracted reviewers. Starting in January 2009, USGBC will be moving administration of the certification process to the Green Building Certification Institute, a non-profit organization established in 2007 with the support of USGBC. The 10 agencies will certify projects through this apparatus. "We are training [the certifying organizations] now so they are ready to start when the standards go into effect," she says.