Builders question efficacy of green certification (Washington, D.C.)

After attempting a new method of reviewing green building applications for nearly a year, the U.S. Green Building Council’s certification affiliate is now making plans to bring the process back in house after some in the builder community raised doubts about its effectiveness.

The Green Building Certification Institute, which began contracting out the review process for its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification last April, said it plans in the next two years to resume management over a bulk of LEED application reviews. For the past year, in an effort to cut down a growing backlog of applications and slash months-long delays in review times, the institute had been contracting out the review and quality-control processes to 10 outside organizations that specialize in general certification consulting, as opposed to the green building niche.

While the institute’s leaders said those 10 organizations more than doubled the previous pace of LEED evaluations and hired many of the same green building experts whom the USGBC itself had originally used to review LEED applications, they acknowledged that the new format had lost some of its consistency and clarity.

“Collectively, we’ve all been learning from this process,” said Peter Templeton, president of the Green Building Certification Institute, adding that the use of contractors was “putting too much distance between us and the customers.” “We’ve all come across a number of challenges and concerns during this process. We want to make sure we have consistent quality.”

Read the full story in the Washington Business Journal.