The Ultimate Guide to LEED v4 and v4.1 Construction for General Contractors

The most comprehensive educational resource for general contractors, filled with practical guidance on how to achieve LEED construction credits.

Introduction to the Ultimate Guide

by Tommy Linstroth
Founder and CEO at Green Badger
LEED Fellow

Hey! I’m Tommy, founder of Green Badger, and I’m here to break down everything you as a general contractor need to know to successfully manage LEED construction credit documentation.

By the end of reading this ultimate guide, you’ll be equipped with all of the strategies you need to navigate LEED construction without banging your head into the wall. Will this training help you pass the LEED AP exam and be filled with a bunch of esoteric standards, definitions, and arcane references? Maybe not. But it will give you practical information to use in the real world to make sure you don’t run into any pitfalls on your next LEED project. Many bothans didn’t have to die to bring you this information, but personal experience slogging through 150 LEED projects and working with hundreds of other project teams with Green Badger has. The result? A comprehensive guide to how to navigate all the general contractor-related LEED credits - from which you can earn vs those that are not yet market-ready, to procurement strategies to final review advice, and all the tips, tricks, and hacks we’ve learned along the way. As a wise, green leader once said, “Always pass on what you have learned.” Now get out there and crush your LEED documentation!

The History of LEED and USGBC

The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) formed as an organization in the early 1990s by a few guys, who if you ever meet, will never fail to mention. The first version of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, LEED 1.0, rolled out along with USB flash drives and camera phones in the year 2000. Four certification levels were available: Certified (Bronze at the time), Silver, Gold, and Platinum. The certification was (and is) based on meeting a certain number of prerequisites (must-dos) and then based on the total number of points earned. More points = higher level of certification.

Originally one rating system for new construction geared towards offices, there are now 9 rating systems and multiple iterations covering everything from homes to neighborhoods to indeed, entire cities. LEED v1 morphed into LEED v2, v2.1, v2.2, LEED 2009 (v3), to v4, and finally where it stands today with LEED v4.1. Learn more about LEED rating systems here.

Documentation has evolved slightly from hardcopy 3-ring binders to 26-tab Excel workbooks, to the ever frustrating LEED Online (to be fair, LEED Online has been upgraded significantly in 2023 - you can even now use modern browsers like Chrome!). While you can now certify the entire city of Atlanta, we’re still using variations of the same crappy excel tracking tools that went live twenty years ago. While even Microsoft managed to kill off Clippy the paperclip in 2007, USGBC’s doubled down on Excel tracking tools in the years to come.

Fast forward 20 years and LEED is the gold-standard of 3rd party verified green building rating systems, in use in over 140 countries with 100,000+ certified buildings. In the US, LEED is required on all Federally funded projects, two-thirds of State-funded projects, and by thousands of municipalities and institutions of higher education, as well as 90% of Fortune 100 companies on the private sector side.

And that’s why you’re here! Someone, somewhere along the line, required LEED certification for your project. The Ultimate Guide to LEED Construction is here to make that as painless as possible.

Why Should You Opt Into LEED v4.1?

This guide is focused on LEED v4 and v4.1. If you’re on a LEED 2009 project, consider yourself lucky, and keep this in your back pocket for the future, or favorite it in your browser! For everyone else, get ready to dive in. Here are the facts. It is essential for project teams to opt into LEED v4.1 for all the credits formerly (but still informally) known as the Building Product and Disclosure Optimization (BPDO) credits – Environmental Product Declarations, Sourcing of Raw materials, and Material Ingredients. It is also essential to use v4.1 for Low Emitting Materials. It may or may not be useful for Construction Waste Management, and won’t make a difference for Construction Activity Pollution prevention or Indoor air quality management.

What LEED credits should you change to v4.1?

Here are the top 10 reasons why you should make the switch to LEED v4.1 for the credits mentioned above, in no particular order:

The third-party verified documents for EPDs and Ingredient reporting now count as 1.5 products rather than 1 product. Most EPDs are third-party verified, meaning you need 33% fewer products to earn the credit.
Industry-wide EPDs that comply now count as 1 full product, instead of half of a product, so double your bang for the buck.
On top of that, if your project is Commercial Interiors, Core and Shell, or Warehouse, the EPD and Ingredient reporting threshold is cut in half! You only need 10 products to earn the credit, and 20 for an innovation point, and after reading this guide you’ll know exactly where to find those products.
Options 2 for both EPD and Material Ingredients are now actually achievable with some planning! All the old credit language has been re-written, and compliance went from 50% and 25% respectively down 5 total products - no cost based calculations required. 5 products across everything you use on a construction project? Sign me up!
Sourcing of raw materials threshold for 1 point dropped from 25% down to 15% and the cap on structure or enclosures has gone away. So now you can fully count on things like, you know, structural steel, to help you earn the credit. There’s also a 2nd point available at 30%, and exemplary performance at 45%.
SRM Option 1, which wasn’t achievable, has completely been removed.
Low emitting point thresholds are significantly lower. In LEED v4, you pretty much had to hit all 6 product categories to get 3 points. In LEED v4.1 it has dropped to 4 categories for 3 points, 3 categories for 2 points, and 2 categories for 1 point.
To add to that – there are more categories in LEED v4.1! Instead of 6 categories, there are now 8 because ceilings, walls, and insulation are now their own individual categories. Now you can pick and choose where to earn points versus having to go for everything.
But wait, there’s more! Instead of requiring 100% compliance for all those product categories, it has dropped to 75% for each category, except ceilings and floors, which for some reason are at 90%.
For construction waste diversion, earning 1 point is simple - just divert 50% of total construction waste - no material streams needed - and you're set. To get the second point you need to actually reduce the total amount of waste generated - for BDC projects its 1 points for 15 lbs/sf and a second point at 10 lbs/sf (10 lbs/sf and 7.5 lbs/sf for IDC). The kicker is you don't really know these totals until the end, which is why you may want to still use v4 for this credit.
Finally, the new LEED calculators are super usable and user-friendly!

Just kidding! The calculators still suck. Huge, multi-tab beasts that require macros, are filled with bugs and will leave you frustrated and filled with rage.

Cumbersome LEED excel tracking calculators are still the go-to solution for most project teams.

Summary

Why should you go to v4.1?
- Most products count more, so you need less of them. Thresholds for credit achievement are lower across the board and credits you could never achieve have been completely re-written or eliminated completely.
Is my project eligible to use LEED v4.1 credits?
- Now that you know what to switch over to LEED v4.1, people always ask if they can. The simple answer is YES. Any v4 project can opt into LEED v4.1 on a credit by credit basis. It can be for 1 credit or all of them, it is up to the team.
Important point:
- Credit by credit. You do NOT have to opt into the entire rating system unless your project is registered under v4.1 pilot, but then why are we having this discussion anyway?
You’ve already submitted design review?
- Doesn’t matter! Opt-in for the construction review. In fact, USGBC reviewers are even suggesting teams change over in their review comments DURING the construction review process!

How To Opt Into LEED v4.1 in LEED Online

So how do you go about opting into LEED v4.1 credits? Unlike anything else with LEED online, it's actually pretty easy. When you’re in LEED Online, go to your credits tab. Find the credits you want to use for v4.1, and just click this little button on the right side of the screen. It should even say “I am pursuing a LEED v4.1 credit substitution on this credit. Check this box for each credit you plan to attempt. You’ll see a little button pop up asking you to confirm – just hit that, and you’re set! Then just upload the LEED v4.1 calculators, sample forms, and associated documentation as you normally would, and you’re off to the races.

LEED Online opting into LEED v4.1 credits

How to Manage LEED Construction Credits

We’re going to start with how the LEED documentation process should work. Should is important. If you want to ensure it is done correctly, minimize the risk of losing LEED points, and avoid being locked in the job trailer for 2 months straight without a break or even a shower, there are some things you should do throughout your construction process. In the following sections, we’re going to address each of the LEED construction credits in order of how you’ll typically handle them on your job site throughout construction including the requirements, strategies, best practices, and summaries for each credit. Can you achieve some of these credits by ignoring LEED until the last minute, and then pulling a 2 month 18 hour a day cram session? You could, but you could also ride a unicycle in your birthday suit while blindfolded down Main Street. Sure you could, but it isn’t particularly advisable.

SSp1: Construction Activity Pollution Prevention

Construction Activity Pollution Prevention is known by many names with construction activity pollution prevention being the least common. SSp1, Erosion control, SWPPP – they all amount to the same thing. Erosion control measures are pretty much required on most projects anyway, so just make sure you have your silt fence up, keep it functioning, and you’ll be in good shape.

Requirements for SSp1 for LEED v4 and v4.1

Create and implement an erosion and sedimentation control plan for all construction activities associated with the project. The plan must conform to the erosion and sedimentation requirements of the 2017 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Construction General Permit (CGP) or local equivalent, whichever is more stringent. Projects must apply the CGP regardless of size. The plan must describe the measures implemented. These are the same requirements for pretty much any version of LEED, but note that using v4.1 requires compliance with the 2017 version of the EPA CGP. If your state hasn’t updated to that version, you’ll be better off sticking to LEED v4 which relies on the 2012 standard if that’s an option for your project.

Strategies for SSp1 for LEED v4 and v4.1

First and foremost, don’t forget that this is the only construction-related prerequisite, meaning that you have to achieve this or the project cannot earn certification, regardless of how many points get tallied. So don’t mess this one up! Another important note – this is required regardless of the size of your project. Under an acre? Still need it. Zero lot line? Same. Project teams have a choice: to use the EPA CGP or local standard. Now, I’m not a state-by-state erosion control expert, so you’ll have to defer to your civil engineer or another team member to determine which standard is more stringent, and then make sure to use that version.

The whole intent of this prerequisite is to reduce pollution from construction activities by controlling soil erosion, waterway sedimentation, and airborne dust. That means keep the dirt from your site on-site, don’t let stuff trickle into waterways or sewers, and keep dust from flying off-site in the breeze.

Green Badger's Ultimate Guide - Engineer to General Contractor ESC process

Most likely the civil engineer has an ESC plan fully fleshed out in the civil-set that meets the EPA or local standard so you shouldn’t have to worry about that. The general contractor’s job is to implement the plan, and then monitor and maintain it. There’s any number of best management practices but typically this involves things like silt fence, construction entrances, inlet protection, sediment traps, mulching, temporary water, and the like. Install them per the plans, and then either self-monitor or bring in an outside party to inspect that measures - at least monthly and after rain events, or as frequently as weekly.

Green Badger's Ultimate Guide to LEED - Erosion Control with silt fence

If something is found to be impacted or out of compliance, not a big deal - just make sure to fix the issue and have a follow-up corrective action inspection confirm everything is squared away (including pictures of the remediation/corrective action are a definite plus). Handwritten reports or checklists are fine, or use an app that lets you comment and take pictures as you walk the site (hint, hint). Store them all chronologically and at the end of the day, submit a sample of your ESC inspections for your LEED documentation. I’d recommend 3 - one from early in construction, one from the middle, and another close to the end.

Let’s recap the strategy:

The civil engineer should provide a plan that either meets the EPA CGP or the local standard, whichever is more stringent.
Implement the BMPs from the ESC plan and have the design engineer sign off on them
Inspect measures at least monthly and after rain events (and more frequently depending on local requirements), and compile your inspection reports for easy reference
If there are any deficiencies, fix them and do a corrective action report to confirm

Green Badger's Ultimate Guide to LEED - ESC process

Best Practices for Construction Activity Pollution Prevention

The strategies detailed will get you to the point, one way or the other. A few other tips:

Fix any deficiencies ASAP. We’ve seen way too many inspection reports that identify the same issue week after week. If you end up submitting one of these to USGBC they will question it and require the corrective action report.
If a subcontractor is performing inspections, make sure to keep them filed digitally. Handwritten checklists sitting in a binder might meet the local requirements but won’t help you from a LEED perspective.
Don’t forget dust control! USGBC always seems to ask about this (temporary seeding/mulching, or watering).
Even if this is a zero lot line project, you’ll have to still have some measures in place.

Download the SSp1 LEED credit guidance ebook

Summary for SSp1: Construction Activity Pollution Prevention

Let’s recap how to earn 1 point for SSp1:

You’re probably better off using LEED v4 for this one
Verify the path - EPA CGP or local standard
Implement design BMPs
Inspect at least monthly if not more frequently

MRc5: Construction Waste Management

Construction waste management is pursued on nearly every LEED project, and for good reason. With proper planning, two points are achievable. The updates to LEED v4.1 make credit achievement for 1 point very straightforward by eliminating the material streams requirement. Additional points are required by actually minimizing waste (what a concept!) rather than just recycling or diverting from landfills. Other updates include removing the prerequisite altogether and incorporating it into credit compliance here.

Challenges abound. Can project teams really hit the waste reduction goals? If your project has a ton of demolition it will make earning more than 1 point a challenge. For this reason, we’re providing you guidance for both LEED v4 and v4.1 because if your project hasn’t registered specifically under v4.1 then you have the option to choose. This might be one of the instances where staying with LEED v4 gives you a better chance at earning more points.

Requirements for MRc5 for LEED v4.1

Develop and implement a construction and demolition waste management plan and achieve points through waste prevention and/or diversion. All projects must develop and implement a construction and demolition waste management plan:

Identify strategies to reduce the generation of waste during project design and construction.
Establish waste diversion goals for the project by identifying the materials (both structural and nonstructural) targeted for diversion.
Describe the diversion strategies planned for the project. Describe where materials will be taken including expected diversion rates for each material.

Provide a final waste management report detailing all waste generated, including disposal and diversion rates for the project. Calculations can be by weight or volume but must be consistent throughout.

Exclude excavated soil and land-clearing debris from calculations. Include materials destined for alternative daily cover (ADC) in the calculations as waste (not diversion).

Any materials sent to a commingled recycling facility for processing must take the facility's average recycling rate and must include any ADC as waste (not diversion).

1 Point: Divert at least 50% of the total construction and demolition materials from landfills and incineration facilities.

2 Points: Divert 50% of all demolition waste, AND generate less than 10 lbs./ft2 for BD+C or 7.5 lbs./ft2 for ID+C of construction waste.

1 point is pretty easy. 50% diversion rates are pretty common, and you don’t have to bother with all the material stream requirements in v4 or worry about RCI certified facilities. The kicker comes in the wording of the commingled recycling facilities: you must take the facility average which may be significantly lower than your actual rate. That said, as long as you find a facility with an average rate of greater than 50%, your work here is done. One point is in the bag.

Earning additional points may be more challenging. You’re either going to be under 1o lbs per sf or you’re not. This requires tracking all materials generated by the project from the start of construction through project completion to determine the project’s total waste generation and includes all waste and diverted materials from construction, while also recycling at least 50% of any demo-related waste. The only things you don’t include are hazardous materials and land-clearing debris.

Requirements for MRc5 for LEED v4

1 point: Divert 50% and Three Material Streams

2 points: Divert 75% and Four Material Streams

Let’s start with a definition: what is a material stream? The USGBC Reference Guide defines a material stream as flows of materials coming from a job site into markets for building materials. To get the LEED gibberish out of the way, let’s restate - what’s the material, and where does it go. Typically, it is one material going to one end-use or facility.

If you have a metals dumpster on-site and it all goes to one metal recycling company, that counts as one material stream. That is the most straightforward example. However, a single material may count as two material streams.

Green Badger's Ultimate Guide to LEED - Material Streams Example

Example: One Materials can Count at Two Materials Streams

Let’s say you're deconstructing a building and salvaging the brick. Some of the brick is in great shape and you’re able to either reuse it yourself or send it to a reclaimed materials company for resale. That’s one material stream. The rest of the brick wasn’t in great shape, so it got tossed in the masonry dumpster to be recycled as aggregate. That is a second material stream for brick.

What about commingled?

Commingled is typically considered one material stream unless the facility can track and produce documentation of specific materials recycled for your project. If that’s the case, then you can count each material as a separate stream.

What amount of material constitutes a stream?

There is no fixed amount for a product to be considered a material stream. USGBC suggests 5% of total waste, but there’s definitely wiggle room. No, you can’t recycle 1 soda can and count aluminum as a material stream, but you can be strategic with your efforts and bounds.

What doesn’t count as a material stream?

There are a few things you’ll never consider as material streams. The most common waste you’ll come across is land clearing debris (cleared trees, rocks, stones, etc). They don’t help you, but they don’t count against you, so exclude them from your calculator altogether. The same goes for hazardous waste, even if it is from a building being demolished. Dispose of it properly, and account for it in your construction waste management plan, but don’t include it in your overall diversion calculations.

What about RCI-certified facilities?

If you can use a facility that is Recycling Certification Institute (RCI) certified then, by all means, you should. But there are less than 25 RCI-certified facilities in the country, so we’ll assume you don’t have one next door. The diversion tends to be the easy part. The challenge is often obtaining the necessary material streams.

Strategies for MRc5 for LEED v4

Here’s the good news: if you’re registered under v4, you can track under both metrics and see where you’re having more success. If you’re stuck, can only do commingled recycling, and won’t get at least 4 waste streams then just take 1 point for Option 1 in v4.1 and call it a day. If getting 4 waste streams isn’t an issue, then v4 is probably more reliable. Either way, you can calculate your waste per square foot at the end of the project and see where it shakes out. Clearly, more advanced planning is now required, especially for v4.1. Figuring out how the design itself may lead to more waste creation will be important and incorporating modular or prefab where possible are also now considerations.

For ID+C projects, v4.1 seems much more achievable than new construction projects. In a spot check sample of projects using Green Badger, a few ID+C projects were under 10 lb/sf. However, on the BD+C side, ratios ran from 20 lbs/sf to 100 lbs/sf - none of which are anywhere near the LEED requirements for additional points.

With LEED v4, you need 4 different material streams and this is typically quite achievable. A key point is you don’t need 4 separate dumpsters during the entire project. A good strategy is to phase in dumpsters for the timeframe they are needed, so you’re not taking up valuable real estate on your job site.

When you start site work and foundations, you’ll likely not have any waste except concrete. Having a dedicated concrete dumpster during this timeframe is a no-brainer, and once you’re done – boom! 1 (heavy) material stream is already taken care of. Now it's time for the building to go vertical. This is when your commingled recycling dumpster can take the lion’s share of your waste (assuming the hauler/facility is handling it correctly as described below). It is even normal/possible to have a metals dumpster because there’s good value in that scrap! If so, you’re already at 3 streams and can kick back and pop a cold one (as long as you recycle the can in the metal dumpster). If you still need an additional material stream, hyper-focus on another short-term material, like wood pallets, or cardboard as appliances/furniture shows up at the end of the project. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Green Badger's Ultimate Guide to LEED - Strategies for MRc5

Let’s recap the strategy:

If you’re not registered under LEED v4.1, then track both total diversion and waste/sf and see where you shake out - you can choose at the end to use v4 or opt into v4.1, and which option provides the most points.
On-site separation based on phases - not multiple dumpsters throughout (unless you’ve got the space!)
Concrete early
Commingled during (and metals if you can swing it)
Wood, or Cardboard/Paper at the end

One last note on dumpsters:

A material “dumpster” doesn’t mean a 20-yard container hanging out for weeks. A 90-gallon roll-off container counts just as much. Just empty it frequently to keep from overflowing and ending up in the waste pile. These are especially useful on interiors projects.

MRc5 LEED v4 commingled recycling facilities

Important Note on Commingled Recycling:

Commingled recycling facilities must be able to provide project-specific diversion rates or an average diversion rate for the facility that is regulated by the local or state authority. Visual inspection is not an acceptable method for evaluating diversion rates. If the commingled recycling facility can track and produce documentation of specific materials recycled for your project, you can count commingled waste as multiple waste streams. Otherwise, commingled waste that is the average diversion rate for a regulated facility is counted as a single waste stream regardless of how many different materials are included.

The average recycling rate for the facility must exclude alternative daily cover (ADC). Alternative daily cover (ADC) means a cover material other than earthen material placed on the surface of the active face of a municipal solid waste landfill at the end of each operating day to control vectors, fires, odors, blowing litter, and scavenging. Reviewers are more frequently asking for a formal letter from the facility or regulating agency to verify the average recycling rate, so its best to request this from your vendor when you are signing a contract with them.

Best Practices for Construction Waste Management

Hitting your waste targets and material streams is the end goal, and your local haulers and facilities will go a long way towards successful implementation, but there are still other best practices to consider to increase your odds.

1. Have a good construction waste management plan.

First of all, it is required for the prerequisite under MRp2 under v4 - you’ve got to have a plan that identifies what waste is going to be generated for the project, and what means will be implemented to divert from landfills. You need to identify at least 5 different materials in your plan, even if you only need 4 in implementation to earn the points. More consideration of construction materials/type, and overall building design will impact total quantities of waste generated. It remains to be seen how USGBC reviewers critique the required “strategies to reduce the generation of waste during project design and construction” and what they find acceptable.

Regardless, really working through this plan with your waste haulers will help you identify: 1) what the optimum dumpster placement strategy will be, 2) where those materials are going to be going, and 3) what the estimated totals will be. Doing this early will help the team know they are on course to hit the material streams required under the credit. Not thinking this through, and trying to throw it together at the end of construction can lead to not earning any points and leave everyone frustrated.

2. Communicate your waste management plan to the team and the subs.

Let everyone know what the recycling strategies are - one dumpster, multiple dumpsters, subs responsible for their own waste, etc - so there’s no confusion and materials aren’t just getting tossed in the waste dumpster. Speaking of dumpsters - clearly label them by material! Not a tiny sticker on the side - a big, clearly marked sign for each dumpster. While you’re at it - make the signs bi-lingual to ensure everyone can understand what goes where.

3. Finally - track and communicate frequently.

Getting waste reports 6 months after a dumpster pull doesn’t help anyone. Neither does keeping your ongoing progress buried 500 emails deep. Track and report at least monthly what the current diversion percentage is, and how many material streams the project has so that there are no surprises at the end. You don’t want to get that last dumpster pull and find out you’re at 74% because the team got careless. Monitor, report and communicate your waste diversion results so the team can change course if things start to look out of whack.

Construction Waste Management Plan MRc5 LEED v4

Summary for MRc5 Construction Waste Management

Let’s recap how to earn 2 points for MRc5 Construction Waste Recycling:

1 point is a breeze under v4.1 - 50% reduction, and no material streams
2 points are achievable, with 4 material streams and 75% diversion under v4. ID+C projects may easily qualify for the 2nd point under v4.1
If necessary, phase in dumpsters, with concrete early, then commingled, and finalize with wood/cardboard/etc.
Develop your plan with your hauler early
Communicate frequently!

MRc2: Option 1 Environmental Product Declarations

Environmental product declarations used to be rare as an albino jackalope, but these days, there are a lot of options across the spectrum. That’s not to say you’ll be walking the job site and will trip over a pile of environmental product declarations (EPDs). In fact, most products still don’t have them, but if you know where to look, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Where to look, you may ask? Well, that’s what I’m about to tell you.

Requirements for MRc2 Option 1 for LEED v4.1

1 Point: For most LEED BD+C Projects: 20 products with qualifying environmental product declarations.

1 Point: For Commercial Interiors, Core and Shell, and Warehouse projects, 10 products with qualifying environmental product declarations.

Exemplary Performance Point: 40 products (20 for CI, C&S, Warehouse)You may be asking, why is the word qualifying in italics? What’s the hidden meaning behind that? Unsurprisingly, not all EPDs are created the same, and LEED has a number of different requirements and standards that an EPD must have incorporated, or you’re SOL. Let’s break it down for you.

What is an Environmental Product Declaration?

Do you like watching better than reading? If so, check out this great video. If not, read on!

Environmental product declarations are independently verified reports based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies. The LCA studies must have been conducted according to a set of common rules (“product category rules,” or PCRs) for each product category and then peer-reviewed. EPDs are managed and created by “program operators” — organizations that ensure that the EPDs meet the various requirements. In the U.S. you’ll see those from UL, SCS, ASTM, or NSF, though there are a few others that are coming around.

There are 4 types accepted by USGBC:

Product-specific LCA,
Industry-Wide,
Product Specific Type III, Internally Reviewed
Product Specific Type III, Externally Reviewed

The first three all count as 1 product in your quest towards 20, while Product-Specific Type III, Externally reviewed counts as 1.5 products.

Broadly speaking, there are 2 main types of EPDs that we come across:

Industry-Wide
Product Specific Type III Externally reviewed

Industry-wide means it is not brand specific. This is one for concrete from the National Ready Mix Concrete Association. You can apply it to any of 72 ready mixed concrete products, as long as you get it from a plant that participated in the EPD. Manufacturers must be specifically identified as participants in the EPD, or it won’t count (or in this case, available to be verified through the link).

NSF International EPD industry wide Green Badger LEED

There aren’t a ton of compliant industry-wide EPDs out there, but you’ll see them for some pretty common items including Type X gypsum board and glas-mat gypsum. For concrete, keep in mind that there are 72 mix designs listed and each one counts as a separate product, so you can potentially have multiple products from this single EPD.

And the most common EPD type is….

By far and away, the most common EPD out there is Product-Specific Type III, Externally reviewed. That means they are for one manufacture, for a specific product line, and the information has been verified by a 3rd party. And that’s almost every EPD – that’s what the manufacturer is paying someone for – to verify it! So pretty much any EPD you get from UL, SCS, NSF, or ASTM will all be third-party verified and product-specific. Here’s what you’ll need to look at just to be sure. Frankly, you can ignore 20 out of the 21 pages in these EPD documents.

There’s always a little summary table that will tell you Program Operator – that’s who created the EPD.

Who is it for? That’s the manufacturer (technically the Declaration Holder).

What is it for? There’s your product-specific information (Declared Product).

And finally, a box that will be checked for internal or external, and it is almost always external because that’s what the manufacturer is shelling out the big bucks for.

There you have it! This most common EPD type counts as 1.5 products on your quest to 10 or 20 total products.

Strategies for MRc2 Option 1 for LEED v4.1

Now that you know what an EPD is and what types qualify for LEED, let’s dive into where on earth will you find enough to earn the points? It's easy - I’m sure your architect provided a very detailed spec roadmap that identifies 25 products that they’ve picked out to ensure credit compliance - boom, you’re set! Wait, they didn’t? There’s just a generic spec saying provide EPDs for 20 products? Well, that doesn’t help! Fortunately, I’m here to tell you where to look (and take notes, this will be the exact same guidance for earning Material Ingredient Reporting or MRc4 Option 1).

Where to find 20 products that have LEED Compliant Environmental Product Declarations:

Green Badger recommends focusing on 6 different submittals and it's where you’ll find boatloads of EPDs. Here’s where to start.

Insulation
Flooring
Gypsum board
Ceiling tile
Paint
Doors and hardware

Why focus on these six categories? Because each category has multiple manufactures with lots of options – you're not pigeonholed into sole sourcing, and you’ve got these products on every single construction project. I’ll offer a precursor before I go into the details. Neither I nor Green Badger endorse, recommend, prefer, sponsor, etc. any of the brands and products listed. Nor is this a comprehensive list of every single product that exists with an EPD or HPD. It's simply some guidance on product categories to get your points without banging your head into a wall. Now, let’s take a quick run-through.

1. Insulation

Noisy? Use acoustical insulation. Cold? Bundle up that thermal insulation. Condensating pipes? There’s insulation for that! Odds are that you have at least 3 types of insulation on your project if not more. All the big players are here – Owens Corning, Johns Manville, Knauff, Certainteed – plus a lot of options including thermal, acoustic, batt, spray, faced, unfaced. For a more comprehensive list of compliant insulation products, download our LEED Product Guide.

2. Flooring

Next, we suggest the Flooring category. There are a ton of options for carpet, VCT, and ceramic tile. All the brands that show up – Armstrong, Shaw, Interface, Milliken – come with EPDs and HPDs. Don’t forget the adhesives! Laticrete alone has over 100 products with HPDs, plus WF Taylor, XL brands, and others. For a more comprehensive list of compliant insulation products, download our LEED Product Guide.

3. Gypsum Board

The next category we suggest is Gypsum Board. The big players are here too, including National Gypsum, USG, Certainteed, and American. Gypsum board is another category with a wide variety of products like Type X, Fire Rated, Mold Resistant, GlasMat, Tile Backerboard, Shaftliner, abuse-resistant – the list goes on and on! And they all count as separate products. For a more comprehensive list of compliant gypsum board products, download our LEED Product Guide.

4. Ceiling Tile

Armstrong, Certainteed, and USG all have multiple options for ceiling tile, and when was the last time you had a project that just used 1 single ceiling tile throughout? And if you need to, you can always hang a different tile in the mechanical room! I didn’t just say that, I’d never suggest such a shameless tactic to pick up a point! For a more comprehensive list of compliant ceiling tile products, download our LEED Product Guide.

5. Paints

All the big manufacturers show up with compliant products in the paint category. What’s great is that each sheen of paint counts as a product, so that means if you’re using Sherwin Williams Promar 200 zero VOC paint, you can count the primer, flat, eggshell, semi-gloss, and gloss paints all as unique products! Throw in block fillers and direct to metals and you’re nearly halfway there. For a more comprehensive list of compliant paint products, download our LEED Product Guide.

6. Doors & Hardware

Finally, the doors and hardware category. You’ve got a ton of options here – from doors and frames to kickplates, gaskets, locks, and closing devices. This one always slips through the cracks but you could knock out half of your EPDs here. For a more comprehensive list of compliant doors and hardware products, download our LEED Product Guide.

Using this roadmap, most projects could pick 6 paints, at least 4 flooring products, 3 door components, 4 wall products, 2 ceiling products, and 2 insulation types and you’re home-free – all without counting that they are worth 1.5 products apiece because all those EPDs are, you guessed it, Externally Reviewed! So there you go. Hit up these submittals and I’m confident you’ll have completed your requirements for EPDs and Ingredient reporting for Options 1 without having to get in fistfights with the architect, subcontractors, or anyone else.

Green Badger's Ultimate Guide to LEED - Strategies for MRc2 Option 2

Let’s recap the strategy:

Start your efforts with insulation, flooring, gypsum board, ceiling tiles, paint, and doors/hardware
Check the finish schedule early and often, and review with the architect to roadmap product selection
Get to 20 products quickly, and you can change the acronym EPD from environmental product declaration to Every Person Drinking!

Best Practices for Environmental Product Declarations

The strategies we’ve provided will help you earn the EPD credit, and likely the MIR credit as well, but you still have to corral all of that information, get it stamped/approved, and track it all over months or years of construction.

Green Badger's Ultimate Guide to LEED - Best Practices for MRc2 Option 2

Here are a few other best practices for consideration to help make it as seamless as possible:

This goes without saying, but using your Green Badger project license makes this all so easy, so automated, and so headache-free.
Roadmap as early as possible with the architects. We are seeing more and more architects detail out products to go for, but when they don’t, get on the same page and have a joint strategy to make sure you’re on the path to success
Use a LEED materials cover sheet for your subcontractors. Making them fill this out solves a number of problems! It helps you nail down material cost in a clean manner, requires the sub to put some thought into LEED attributes, and gives you a way to cross-check the backup documentation.
Double-check the EPDs to make sure they detail what you need as you learned earlier. Make sure the whole EPD is included, not just 1 page of it.
If you’re not using Green Badger, go ahead and create a LEED EPD folder. You have to submit ALL of them to USGBC, so having them in one folder you can zip up and upload at the end will make life a lot better come submission time.

Summary for MRc2 Option 1: Environmental Product Declarations

Let’s recap how to earn 1 point for MRc2 Option 1:

Make sure you are using LEED v4.1!!!!!!
Roadmap early with the design team
Focus on insulation, flooring, gypsum board, ceiling tile, paints, and doors/hardware
Verify and log your EPDs into a folder for easy submission to USGBC

MRc2: Option 2 Multi-Attribute Optimization

The MRc2 credit that was dead-on-arrival in LEED v4, Multi-Attribute Optimization, now is achievable with some planning (or dumb luck) in LEED v4.1. The credit thresholds have been re-written so that only 5 products are needed, and there’s actually a confirmed standard to demonstrate compliance. The challenge that remains? As you’ll see, there are still only a handful of these products, so you better plan on using all of them and have them identified from spec to installation. There’s literally no room for error.

Requirements for MRc2 Option 2 for LEED v4.1

1 Point: To earn one point, you need to use at least 5 permanently installed products that comply with one of the criteria we’ll discuss shortly from 3 different manufacturers.

Life Cycle Impact Reduction Action Plan (value at ½ product)
Life Cycle Impact Reductions in Embodied Carbon (value at 1 product)
Life Cycle Impact Reductions in Embodied Carbon – 10% reduction global warming potential (value at 1.5 products)
Life Cycle Impact Reductions in Embodied Carbon – 20% reduction in global warming potential and 5% reduction 2 other impact categories (value at 2 products)
And that’s the cliff notes version. The full language will have you mispronouncing eutrophication, learning about tropospheric ozone, and pounding bourbon like you’re Al Swearengen.

So, what does any of that mean? Let’s try and break this down in plain English.

You need 5 permanently installed products from 3 different manufacturers. These products need to either have a plan in place to reduce lifecycle impacts OR show some actual reductions. Here’s what this entails.

What qualifies as a Lifecycle Impact Reduction Plan?

The manufacturer needs to have a product-specific LCA using EN 15804 or ISO 21930 for the product it is claiming. If it has an EPD that qualifies under Option 1 here, you’re in good shape.

There, the manufacturer has to provide a publicly available action plan to mitigate or reduce life cycle impacts. It must be critically-reviewed and include the following components.

Description of the LCA used by the manufacturer to complete the analysis (pretty straightforward, would already be found in the EPD).
Identification of the largest life cycle impact areas identified in the analysis and a narrative description of the impact areas targeted for reduction in the action plan.
Description of specific steps anticipated in implementation of the action plan, with dates and a timeline for implementation.
This is just a plan for reducing the product’s impact down the road – to get 50% credit (or ½ a product), the manufacture needs to develop a plan to reduce impact, but it doesn’t actually need to be implemented. You’ve got to crawl before you walk.

What qualifies as Life Cycle Impact Reductions in Embodied Carbon?

This one gets complicated pretty quickly if you read all the details. Literally, check it out below if you’re a glutton for punishment:

Products that have demonstrated environmental impact reductions for the specified functional unit based on a current third-party EPD or verified LCA that conforms to the comparability requirements of ISO 14025 and ISO 21930. Here’s where your good old EPD comes in. On top of that, it needs to be demonstrated that there is a reduction in the global warming potential (GWP) impact category. Any reduction in GWP is good for 1 product, a 10% reduction counts for 1.5 products, and 20% reduction AND at least a 5% reduction in 2 other impact categories yields 2 products.

What are these impact categories, you may be asking?

Well, I’ll tell you. The impact categories are:

Global warming potential (greenhouse gases), in CO2e;
Depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer, in kg CFC-11e;
Acidification of land and water sources, in moles H+ or kg SO2e;
Eutrophication, in kg nitrogen equivalent or kg phosphate equivalent;
Formation of tropospheric ozone, in kg NOx, kg O3 eq, or kg ethene; and
Depletion of nonrenewable energy resources, in MJ using CML / depletion of fossil fuels in TRACI.

Moles H+? MJ using CML? Kg NOx? W. T. F.

Seriously, this would drive Bill Nye to drink, much less this hapless guy. The good news is that the documentation being provided makes this pretty easy to understand, and there are nice, easy-to-read charts that demonstrate compliance – you don’t need to count any moles, megajoules, or kilograms. Just read the chart like below:

Breaking down documentation to earn MRc2 product credit

These are the 5 impact categories called out in the credit mentioned, and any associated reductions (or additions) from the lifecycle analysis. In this case, the Eco Touch insulation from Owens Corning is demonstrating a 39% reduction in GWP. This earns 2 products (or 200% by cost) towards credit compliance. IF the GWP was over 20%, it would count as 2 products (or 200%) because at least 2 of the other 4 impact categories show a reduction of at least 5% (in this example, all 4 other categories do).

To restate, using documentation similar to the above: if the GWP shows ANY reduction (is a negative number, not 0 or a positive number), THEN it counts as 1 product. If it is at least 10% reduction (-10) then it counts as 1.5 products. Finally, if GWP is a 20% reduction or greater AND at least two of those other impact categories show a 5% reduction, then it counts as 2 products towards the goal of 5.

Strategies for MRc2 Option 2 for LEED v4.1

Here’s the plan. We need to get 5 total products that either have a plan or show reductions in LCA impact categories. There are thousands of products on a construction site so this can’t be too hard, right? Well as we mentioned in the introduction, this is possible – but there are only a couple hundred products* we’ve seen with the required documentation (and that includes A LOT of different sheens of paint), so you’ll be using all of them!

Green Badger's Ultimate Guide to LEED - MRc2 Option 2 Strategies

Side note: Some of the products here are at odds with products available for Material Ingredient Optimization, so you may have to choose which point you’re going after.

*as of December 2023

Let’s put the strategy together.

Slapping down USG Sheetrock Ecosmart Firecode X drywall (1.5 products), and Owens Corning Eco Touch Insulation (1.5 products) compliant line of paint from Sherwin Williams ProMar 200 (0.5 products PER SHEEN) will get you right to 5 products. For a buffer, check your door hardware from Assa Abloy or Allegion and your flooring materials and you'll hopefully be all set.

Best Practices for Multi-Attribute Optimization

Clearly, there is almost no wiggle room for earning the Multi-Attribute Optimization credit. The good news is that if you take this very scripted approach with the intent of earning this credit from the start, you can almost guarantee success. Additionally, for a product to qualify for Multi-Attribute Optimization, it pretty much has to have a Product Specific EPD, so you’ll already have tallied 11 products (valued at 1.5 each since all their EPDs are externally reviewed), resulting in 16.5 products towards the EPD Option 1 goal of 20 (or if its a Core and Shell or Commercial Interiors you’re earning the point and are well on the way to the exemplary performance bonus point).

There are some pretty easy best practices that can really facilitate the documentation for materials and even low-emitting products. Here’s one that you think would be commonplace, but at least in this Badger’s neck of the woods (literally), we don’t see all that frequent – using a required LEED cover sheet for all subcontractors. By having a coversheet, where you require the subcontractor to provide cost and any relevant LEED data (recycled content percentages, distance from extraction and manufacture, VOC content, etc), you get all this information upfront. Or reject the submittal and send it back. Pretty straightforward. You can download your free coversheet here.

Summary for MRc2 Option 2

Let’s recap how to earn 1 point for Multi-Attribute Optimization:

1 point may be achievable, using a sum of 5 products across 3 manufacturers
Take a scripted approach from the 6 manufacturers who have Multi-Attribute Optimization documentation
Spec/sole-sourcing these products will ensure compliance (and may not be an option on federally funded projects
This will also get you 75% of the way to earning EPD Option 1

MRc3: Sourcing of Raw Materials

Sourcing of Raw Materials is a streamlined, more achievable version of the LEED v4 credit. The v4 credit had an unachievable Option 1 (for corporate sustainability reporting), and a 2nd option that required 25% of products by cost to meet a variety of environmental metrics. However, it limited the ability of structural and envelope products to comply. The newly rewritten v4.1 Sourcing of Raw Materials focuses solely on the leadership extraction practices, eliminates the cap on structure and enclosure, and reduces the threshold for earning the point. A second point is also available if you are really hitting it out of the park.

The good news? This credit is now pretty achievable. It tends to be easier on new construction projects, but plenty of interiors projects are navigating this as well – and we’ll share how they are doing it below. What strategy have you been using to achieve this credit on your projects? Let us know in the comments section.

Requirements for MRc3 Sourcing of Raw Materials

1-2 Points: There are 2 points available under sourcing of raw materials under v4.1.

For 1 point, you need to use products sourced from at least three different manufacturers that meet at least one of the responsible sourcing and extraction criteria we’ll talk about for at least 15%, by cost, of the total value of permanently installed building products in the project (1 point).

To earn the 2nd point, you need to useUse products sourced from at least five different manufacturers that meet at least one of the responsible sourcing and extraction criteria below for at least 30%, by cost of the total value of permanently installed building products in the project (2 points).

Extended Producer Responsibility (valued at 50% by cost)
Biobased Products (valued at 50% by cost)
Wood Products
Material Reuse (valued at 200% by cost)
Recycled Content

There you go – a menu of options that all wrap up in aggregate the need to be at least 15% of total material cost Divisions 3-10 for one point, or 30% for two points. NOTE - you can combine attributes - its not one vs the other - so if you've got a product with recycled content that also has a manufacturer takeback program, you get credit for both attributes.

How do I earn points for Sourcing of Raw Materials?

Of all of the BPDO credits, Sourcing of Raw Materials may be most understood, as almost all the compliance paths are interactions of older versions of LEED. Good old recycled content (counting the same as post-consumer % + ½ pre-consumer), FSC wood, material reuse – the band is back together! Biobased products have replaced rapidly renewable, and new to the game (for v4 and 4.1) is extended producer responsibility.

All of those attributes add up in one bucket in your quest to 15% by cost.

What is extended producer responsibility?

Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is commonly known as a takeback program, or closed-loop program. In short, when an installed product’s useful life is over, the manufacturer will take it back and reprocess it into new products. The most common example is carpet – you change our carpet every few years. When you rip it out, the manufacturer will take it back and turn it into a new carpet. Of course, there are some additional requirements the project must have – for carpet, the program has to meet NSF/ANSI 140-2007, whatever the hell that is.

Frankly, we don’t see too many of these programs, BUT many of the major flooring and ceiling tile manufacturers comply and almost every project has a good chunk of carpet and ACT. So, put a pin in this because it may become useful for you. (Hint, hint.)

Strategies for MRc3 Sourcing of Raw Materials

On to the (not so) secret sauce. First, an important note: while this credit can be straightforward to achieve, your project type may dictate your strategy. New construction projects are going to take a different approach than Commercial Interior projects because new construction tends to benefit greatly from 2 things interior projects lack - Structural Steel and Rebar.

Cut to the chase - out of all the options USGBC provides, recycled content makes up the vast majority of it. In fact, the easiest way to earn this credit is to focus on structural steel, rebar, interior metal studs, and see how far you get. That was always our hunch, so we decided to research it. We surveyed over a dozen Green Badger projects and analyzed how they achieved this point.

These projects represented over $300,000,000 in Divisions 3-10 materials cost, and resulted in about $100,000,000 of products that complied with Leadership Extraction Practices. Of that - 85% originated from recycled content! FSC wood only accounted for 7%, and EPR was less than 0.5%. Biobased wasn’t found on any of them, and material reuse only came up once (but in a big way - more on that in a bit).

This is a small sample size, but recycled content is clearly where you’ll want to focus, especially for new construction.

What to focus on for SRM for New Construction Projects

As mentioned, new construction projects get the significant benefit of lots of steel - structural steel, metal decking, steel joist, interior metal studs, and rebar. In fact, in our study rebar alone made up 25% of the recycled content contributions. Structural steel and all its iterations were the number one option though - 48% of the contribution originated within that category. That totals 73% of all recycled content materials in rebar and structural steel. The rest came from a combination of interior metal studs, doors/hardware, and storefront. Barely 1% comes from flooring, drywall, or ceiling tile. If you happen to have a lot of FSC casework or if furniture is part of your project, you can look there as well, but otherwise stick to metal.

Our guidance as always - focus on big-ticket, expensive metal items that we mentioned - structural steel, joist/deck, interior metal studs, doors/hardware, and anything FSC certified. Don’t sweat the small stuff unless you really need it - that $128 dollars of recycled content in that gasket is more trouble than it’s worth.

Side note: Many of these products also have EPDs and HPDs. As always, the fewer submittals you can earn these points with, the better!

Structural Steel:
- Recycled Content
  - Steel tube
  - Metal Deck
  - Structural Steel
  - Steel joist
  - Metal Stairs
  - Flats/Plates/Angles
Rebar
- Recycled Content
  - Reinforcing bar
  - Reinforcing wire
Interior Metal Studs
- Recycled content
Doors and Hardware
Storefront/Aluminum Glazing Systems
- Recycled Content
Any FSC wood products

If those don’t get you to the 15% goal:

Drywall
Ceilings/Grid
Insulation
Flooring

What to focus on for SRM for Commercial Interiors Projects

Well hot damn, my interior project doesn’t have any of that glorious structural steel, nor 1 lick of rebar anywhere to be found. Am I fixen to be hogtied here? A better question would be why did this deep south accent just come about - but bless your heart, we’ve got options for your commercial interiors project. Your project may not have all that expensive steel, but it also has much smaller materials costs, so the products you do go after have a much more profound impact.

Some items are still important - interior metal studs and doors and hardware being two big categories that will also be on CI projects. But here’s where other product types start to play a much larger role. Let’s start with flooring.

You may recall we mentioned most flooring manufacturers have take-back programs and comply with Extended Producer Responsibility - and if you don’t, we just told you. Flooring made up 16% of interiors contribution because all the major manufacturers have these programs - which means at least 50% by cost of all that flooring is going to your benefit. Add on that you can compound with recycled content, and you can be near 100% contributing value of your flooring products, which really starts to move the needle in your favor.

Drywall and ceilings play a more prominent role in interiors projects, accounting for almost 10% of the total contribution.

The secret weapon? Furniture, in two different ways. If you luck into a certain situation, furniture can take care of this whole credit solo. That situation may be rare, but if you’re reusing furniture (moving it from an old office location into your new project), it all counts under material reuse, which has a 200% multiplier! We haven’t seen it happen too many times, but if you fall into this scenario, you can apply market rates to what new furniture would cost, and then double it for credit compliance. You’ll be kicking back your heels in that nice, reused Aeron chair in no time!

Even if you’re not reusing it, furniture can play an oversized role in an interiors project budget. The good news is that a lot of chairs and workstations partitions have recycled content and/or FSC wood components, and they will play an overly important role in earning this credit. Throw in FSC or metal casework, and you’re set.

Side note: Many of these products also have EPDs and HPDs. As always, the fewer submittals you can earn these points with, the better!

Flooring:
- Extended Producer Responsibility
  - Interface
  - Shaw
  - Milliken
  - Armstrong
  - Tarkett
Interior Metal Studs
- Recycled content
Insulation
- Recycled content
Gypsum Board
- Recycled Content
Doors and Hardware
- Recycled content
Ceiling Tiles and Grid
- Extended producer responsibility
- Recycled content
Furniture and Casework
- Reused furniture (200%!)
- Recycled Content
- FSC

Best Practices for Sourcing of Raw Materials

Depending on project type, there may not be too many items you’ll need to track. Either way, anything metal or FSC wood is a good place to start, and on interiors projects, double up on flooring and furniture where you can. Most of these products will help you earn the EPD/HPD credits as well.

Important Note: Make sure your recycled content information is up to par. Documentation needs to be product-specific (and project-specific if possible). If you’ve got a cut sheet from a rebar manufacturer, and they list 10 different mills, make sure you specify which one your steel came from. If your ceiling tile sheet says Up to 73% recycled content! That won’t cut it - you need the actual pre and post-consumer recycled content information for your project.

Summary for MRc3 Sourcing of Raw Materials

Let’s recap how to earn points for Sourcing of Raw Materials:

1 point is achievable for using 15% by cost of compliant products, and a 2nd point is available if you hit 30%, though that is still a tall order.
Structure or enclosure no longer matters, so focus on big-ticket steel products
New construction relies heavily on structural steel, rebar, interior metal studs, and doors/hardware
Commercial Interiors projects have a greater emphasis on flooring, drywall, ceilings, and furniture
Most of these products will also help earn the EPD and Ingredient Reporting credits.

MRc4: Option 1 Material Ingredient Reporting

Have you ever wondered what’s really inside some of those products you are using inside of your building? No? Me neither! But hey, someone smarter than me decided that you should be informed of what exactly is hanging on your walls or under your feet, and that is what this credit is all about. This credit is going to sound a lot like Green Badger’s guidance on EPDs that you read earlier.

More and more products are generating documentation to comply with this credit - over 12,000 products are listed in the HPD Collarborative's respository (Only 5,000 are pre-screened for LEED compliance)*. These are predominantly Health Product Declarations, but both Cradle to Cradle and Declare are growing (more on all of those in a bit).

That said, products with compliant documentation are abundant when you know where to look for them. Where to look, you may ask? Well, that’s what I’m about to tell you!

*as of December 2023

Requirements for MRc4 Option 1 Material Ingredient Reporting

1 Point: For most LEED BD+C Projects: 20 products with qualifying material ingredient reports that demonstrate the chemical inventory of the product to at least 0.1% (1000 ppm).

1 Point: For Commercial Interiors, Core and Shell, and Warehouse projects, 10 products with qualifying environmental product declarations.

Exemplary Performance Point: 40 products (20 for CI, C&S, Warehouse)

There are nine compliance options that USGBC lists (for the entire list, click here), but since we’re pretty pragmatic Badger’s, we’ll only focus on the options that you’ll actually see in the marketplace. They were alluded to earlier, but they are:

Health Product Declaration: The end-use product has a published and complete Health Product Declaration with full disclosure of known hazards in compliance with the Health Product Declaration open Standard.
Cradle to Cradle: The product has Material Health Certificate or is Cradle to Cradle Certified™ under standard version 3 or later with a Material Health achievement level at the Bronze level or higher.
Declare: The Declare product label must meet the following requirements:
- Declare labels designated as Red List Free or Declared.
- Declare labels designated as LBC Compliant that demonstrate content inventory to 0.1% (1000 ppm).

These documents show you what’s in a product - but is anyone actually reviewing chemical components and making product selections based on them? No one we know. Just having an HPD does not mean a product is any healthier than another - it is simply a detailed list of what is inside something. You can use that chemistry degree you keep in your back pocket to make those decisions.

What is a Health Product Declaration?

Do you like watching better than reading? If so, check out this great video. If not, read on!

Health Product Declarations (HPDs) provide a full disclosure of the potential chemicals of concern in products by comparing product ingredients to a set of priority “hazard” lists based on the GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals and additional lists from other government agencies.

HPD’s qualify for LEED v4 and 4.1 if the end use product has a published and complete Health Product Declaration with full disclosure of known hazards in compliance with the HPD open Standard. It must demonstrate the chemical inventory of the product to at least 0.1% (1000 ppm). Not all HPDs are fully LEED v4 compliant. Here’s what you need to be on the lookout for: The big one, make sure that the Threshold Level is either 100 ppm or 1000 ppm – that is a must.

Important note! 100 ppm is MORE stringent than 1000 ppm - we’ve seen LEED reviewer comments stating that an HPD wasn’t compliant because 100 ppm was checked, not 1000 ppm. BOTH OPTIONS COUNT, AND 100 ppm is MORE stringent!

Second, make sure the YES box is checked for substances being Characterized and Screened.

Finally, check the bottom of page 1 and see if it is 3rd party verified (there’s only about 100 that are) and make sure that it hasn’t expired.

HPDs count as 1 product towards the 20 required to earn the point and third-party verified HPDs count as 1.5 products, though as of December 2023, there are only 393 products (306 of which have been prechecked for LEED compliance).

What are Declare labels?

Next up are Declare labels. Declare labels are another form of material ingredient reporting that are growing in popularity. According to the International Living Future Institute, who created and administers the program, a Declare label tells you three things:

Where does a product come from?
What is it made of?
Where does it go at the end of its life?

Similar to HPDs, not all Declare Labels are created equally in the eyes of LEED. Per USGBC, Declare labels contribute toward the credit when they meet the following requirements:

Declare labels designated as Red List Free OR Declared, and are very clearly marked if they are also third-party reviewed. Declare labels meeting those requirements count as 1 product towards earning Material Ingredient Reporting in LEED v4 and v4.1. Third-party verified Declare labels count as 1.5 products for v4.1.

What is a Cradle to Cradle or Material Health Certificate?

Last up, Cradle to Cradle – both C2C certified and C2C material health certificates count the same. According to the Cradle to Cradle Institute who administers the program, products are assessed for environmental and social performance across five critical sustainability categories: material health, material reuse, renewable energy and carbon management, water stewardship, and social fairness.

A product is assigned an achievement level (Basic, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum) for each category. A product’s lowest category achievement also represents its overall certification level.

Products comply with MIR Option 1 if it has Material Health Certificate or is Cradle to Cradle Certified under standard version 3 or later with a Material Health achievement level at the Bronze level or higher. If it is Cradle to Cradle certified Bronze or higher, it complies, as the overall certification is based on the lowest level of achievement.

Even better, C2C is considered third-party verified so any C2C product will count for 1.5 products towards your goal in LEED v4.1.

Strategies for MRc4 Option 1 Material Ingredient Reporting

Now that you know what types of material ingredient reports are available, and what each needs to have to qualify for LEED, let’s figure out where these products live. Similar to EPDs, I’m sure the team has already pre-identified all of these products, so you don’t even have to worry about it, right? Oh yeah, that’s right, they did not… Here’s where to go (and it's the same strategies we recommend for EPDs, so if you’ve memorized that, this may be a bit redundant).

Where to find 20 products that have LEED Compliant Material Ingredient Reporting

Green Badger recommends focusing on 6 different submittals, and it is where you’ll find boatloads of MIR. Here’s where to start.

Insulation
Flooring
Gypsum board
Ceiling tile
Paint
Doors and hardware

First up, Insulation: Noisy? Use acoustical insulation. Cold? Bundle up that thermal insulation. Condensating pipes? There’s insulation for that! Odds are that you have at least 3 types of insulation on your project if not more. All the big players are here, Owens Corning, Johns Manville, Knauff, Certainteed – plus lots of options – thermal, acoustic, batt, spray, faced, unfaced. Take your pick!

Next, we suggest Flooring: Tons of options for carpet, VCT, and ceramic tile. All the brands that show up – Armstrong, Shaw, Interface, Milliken – most with EPDs and HPDs. Don’t forget the adhesives! Laticrete alone has over 100 products with HPDs, plus WF Taylor, XL brands, and others.

Onto Gypsum Board: The big players are here too – National Gypsum, USG, Certainteed, American, and it is another category with a wide variety of products – Type X, Fire Rated, Mold Resistant, GlasMat, Tile Backerboard, Shaftliner, abuse-resistant – the list goes on and on! And they all count as separate products.

In that same line, Ceiling Tile. Armstrong, Certainteed, and USG all have multiple options, and when was the last time you had a project that just used 1 single ceiling tile throughout? And if you need to, you can always hang a different tile in the mechanical room! I didn’t just say that, I would never suggest such a shameless tactic to pick up a point!

Paints – all the big manufacturers. What’s great is each sheen counts as a product, so if you’re using Sherwin Williams Promar 200 zero VOC paint, you can count the primer, flat, eggshell, semi-gloss, and gloss paints all as unique products. Throw in block fillers and direct to metals and you’re nearly halfway there.

Finally, doors and hardware. You’ve got a ton of options here – from doors and frames to kickplates, gaskets, locks, and closing devices. This one always slips through the cracks but you could knock out half of your EPDs here.

Environmental Product Declarations Roadmap

Using this roadmap, most given projects could pick up 6 paints, at least 4 flooring products, 3 door components, 4 wall products, 2 ceiling products, and 2 insulation types and you’re home-free. Most of these products will not be third-party verified, so you’ll want to make sure you’ve got 20 without counting on the multiplier.

So there you go – hit up these submittals and I’m confident you’ll have completed your requirements for EPDs and Ingredient reporting for Options 1 without having to get in fistfights with the architect, subcontractors, or anyone else.

Let’s recap the strategy:

Start your efforts with insulation, flooring, gypsum board, ceiling tiles, paint, and doors/hardware
Check the finish schedule early and often, and if possible, review with the architect to roadmap product selection
Get to 20 products quickly, and you can change the acronym MIR from material ingredient reporting to Mostly Ingesting Rum.

Best Practices for Material Ingredient Reporting

The strategies we’ve provided will help you earn the MIR credit, and likely the EPD credit as well, but you’ve still got to corral all of that information, get it stamped/approved, and track it all over months or years of construction. Here are a few other best practices for consideration to help make it as seamless as possible.

This goes without saying but using your Green Badger project license makes this all so easy, so automated, so headache-free…
Roadmap as early as possible with the architects. We are seeing more and more architects detail out products to go for, but when they don’t, get on the same page and have a joint strategy to make sure you’re on the path to success
Use a LEED materials coversheet for your subcontractors. Making them fill this out solves a number of problems - it helps you nail down material cost in a clean manner, requires the sub to put some thought into LEED attributes, and gives you a way to cross-check the backup documentation.
Double-check the MIR to make sure they detail what you need as you learned earlier. For HPDs make sure the whole declaration is provided, not just the first page, and that either 100ppm or 1000ppm are checked.
If you’re not using Green Badger, go ahead and create a LEED MIR folder - you’ve got to submit ALL of them to USGBC, so having them in one folder you can zip up and upload at the end will make life a lot better come submission time.

Summary for MRc4 Option 1 Material Ingredient Reporting

Let’s recap how to earn 1 point for MRc4 Option 1:

Make sure you are using LEED v4.1!
Roadmap early with the design team
Focus on insulation, flooring, gypsum board, ceiling tile, paints, and doors/hardware
Verify and log your MIRs into a folder for easy submission to USGBC

MRc4: Option 2 Material Ingredient Optimization

What is it about Option 2’s that USGBC hates? If they make an Option 2 available, it is always the most complicated, cumbersome, and labor-intensive point available. In fact, if you want a good cheat-sheet, if there’s an Option 2 available just run the other way. Option 2 of this credit in LEED v4 wasn’t achievable, so they added an Option 3! Thankfully, all of that is DOA for v4.1. Option 2 remains the same structurally, but the compliance thresholds have dropped significantly, and it puts this credit in the realm of possibly achievable.

Requirements for MRc4 Option 2 Material Ingredient Optimization

1 Point: To get it, you need to use products that comply with one of the criteria I’ll discuss for at least 5 permanently installed products sourced from at least three different manufacturers.

Material Ingredient Screening and Optimization Action Plan (value at ½ product)
Advanced Inventory & Assessment (value at 1 product)
Material Ingredient Optimization (value at 1.5 products)

Similar to EPD Option 2, this is the cliff-notes version so buckle up, pour a stiff one, and get ready for your crash course into green chemistry.

Alright, You need 5 products from 3 different manufacturers. These products need to either have a plan in place to reduce ingredient impacts OR show some actual reductions. Here’s what this entails (if you don’t care, just skip to the Strategies for achieving MRc4 Option 2 below).

What qualifies as a Material Ingredient Screening and Optimization Action Plan?

The manufacturer has screened the product to at least 1,000 ppm and has provided a publicly available inventory meeting the requirements of Option 1 - that’s the easy part. If you have an HPD already, the first step in the right direction!

Next, the manufacturer must create a detailed action plan to mitigate or reduce known hazards using the principles of green chemistry. This action plan needs to describe the screening platform and then identify the specific green chemistry principles targeted for implementation, specific steps anticipated for implementation, proposed changes in formulation or manufacturing processes that are planned and specific dates, and a full timeline for completion of all the steps described in the action plan.

If they do all that, their product counts as a whopping 0.5 contribution to earning this point.

What qualifies as an Advanced Inventory & Assessment?

The product needs a third-party verified HPD that was inventoried to 100 ppm. From there, you better be an expert in the GreenScreen Benchmark Assessment because it can’t have any LT-1 or GHS Category 1 Hazards (whatever those are) or at least 75% by weight of the product is assessed using the GreenScreen Benchmark.

Fortunately, there are easy-to-understand options available that don’t require a chemistry degree.

Declare labels designated as Red List Free that are third-party verified, or Living Product Challenge certified products that include a Red List Free Declare label.
Cradle to Cradle: Product has Material Health Certificate or is Cradle to Cradle Certified™ under standard version 3 or later with a Material Health achievement level at the Bronze level or higher.

What qualifies as Material Ingredient Optimization?

The product needs a third-party verified HPD that was inventoried to 100 ppm with no Benchmark 1 or LT-1 hazards AND 95% by weight assessed using the GreenScreen Benchmark.

OR
Cradle to Cradle Certification: Product has Material Health Certificate or is Cradle to Cradle Certified™ under standard version 3 or later with a Material Health achievement level at the Silver level or higher.
Living Product Challenge Certification: Products certified to the Living Product Challenge which includes achievement of Imperative 09: Transparent Material Health.

Strategies for MRc4 Option 2 Material Ingredient Optimization

If you managed to make it this far without pounding your head into a wall, let’s figure out what all of those compliance options really mean. First and foremost, ditch the chemistry degree. Let’s focus on how to most easily find products that qualify. We suggest using the 3rd party labels to avoid having to figure out GreenScreen assessments and hazards.

That means use either products with Declare Labels that are Red List Free and 3rd party verified, Living Product Challenge labeled products (that achieved Transparent Material Health), or those that are Cradle to Cradle certified (or have a Material Health Certificate).

Now, there are only 100 products that meet the Declare requirements, and literally half of those are different carpets from Milliken and Mohawk, but those could get you started. You do only need 5 products.

A better bet might be Cradle to Cradle, which shows 200 compliant products, where you can use flooring from Tarkett, Shaw, Milliken, Nora, and Bentley Mills, curtainwall from Kawneer, Construction Specialty Louvers and Entrance mat systems and my favorite, Hilti Fire Caulk. Almost all of these are Silver or higher, so you’ll get credit for 1.5 products.

Here’s the Math:

For flooring, there are a lot of options, but for today we’ll use 2 different Shaw Ecoworx tiles (or Mohawk or Milliken), with Shaw adhesive, and Tarkett Baseworks wall base, and another rubber flooring from either Tarkett or Nora. Don’t forget the flooring adhesives! There are 35 flooring adhesives that are either Cradle to Cradle certified or have a Material Health Certificate from XL Brands, Tarkett, Forbo, Shaw, Armstrong, and more.

If you need something to finish it off check out Kawneer curtainwall, some louvers and entrance systems from Construction Specialties, or rebar from Nucor. And don't forget that Hilti Fire Caulk - I see it on A LOT of projects! And heck, if I’m still in need, there’s always more flooring options for that mechanical room.

INSULATION

International Cellulose K13 Acoustical Thermal Insulation (1 product weight)

CEILINGS

Rockfon Sonar, Radar (1 product weight)
Lindner LMD Metal Ceiling (1 product weight)
Integra Metal Ceiling Panels (1 product weight)

ALUMINUM SYSTEMS

Kawneer 1600 Wall System (1 product weight)
Kawneer Aluminum Façade & Sliding Systems (1.5 product weight)

HARDWARE

Pemko Perimeter Gasketing (1 product weight)

FIRESTOP

Hilti Firestop (1 product weight)

TILE

Crossville (1 product weight)

RESILIENT FLOORING

Mannington Mills Rubber Tile (1 product weight)
Tarkett Rubber Flooring (1 product weight)
Gerflor Resilient Flooring (1.5 product weight)
Johnsonite Vinyl Wall Base (1.5 product weight)
Mondo (Artigo) Rubber Flooring (1.5 product weight)
Nora Noracare, Noraplan Standard (1.5 product weight)
Tarkett Linoleum & Base (1.5 product weight)

ADHESIVES

Forbo Sustain (1 product weight)
WF Taylor Resilient Flooring Adhesive (1 product weight)
XL Brands - various (1 product weight)
Forbo Sustain (1.5 product weight)
Henkel Loctite HB S Purebond Line (1.5 product weight)
Shaw S150 Spray Adhesive (1.5 product weight)
Tarkett Resilient Flooring & Cove Base Adhesive (1.5 product weight)
WF Taylor Adhesives (1.5 product weight)

CARPET

EF Contract (J&J) Kinetex (1 product weight)
Mohawk Ecoflex (1 product weight)
Shaw EcoWorx (1 product weight)
Bentley Mills Affix, Afirma, EliteFlex (1.5 product weight)
Bentley Mills Tile & Broadloom (1.5 product weight)
Interface CQuest™Bio and Biox (1.5 product weight)
Modulyss Ecoback/Comfortback (1.5 product weight)
Patcraft (Shaw) EcoWorx ®Tile Carpets (1.5 product weight)
Tandus Centiva Powerbond Ethos Cushion (1.5 product weight)
Milliken Wellbac (1.5 product weight)

PAINTS AND COATINGS

Sherwin Williams Emerald line (.5 product weight)
Sherwin Williams Loxon Concrete & Masonry Primer (.5 product weight)
Sherwin Williams Preprite ProBlock (.5 product weight)
Sherwin Williams Preprite Block Filler (.5 product weight)
Sherwin Williams ProMar 200 Zero VOC line (.5 product weight)

There you have it! You can easily get 5 products with just your flooring and ceiling products. And don’t forget, these also counted for Ingredient reporting Option 1, AND most if not all have EPDs too. So you can achieve all three credits with these handful products.

Best Practices for Material Ingredient Optimization

As you can see, there is a bit more wiggle room in achieving MIR Option 2 than EPD Option 2, but still not a lot. These products need to be intentionally selected early in the process.

Even so, there are plenty of options with flooring and ceiling products if you’re strategic about it, as most of them count for 1.5 products. This means that in the end, you really only need 4 individual products and you can spec those if you really want this point. Don’t forget these products will all count under MRc4 Material Ingredient Reporting (Option 1), so you’ll be halfway to earning that credit, or practically done if it is an interiors project.

Summary for MRc4 Option 2 Material Ingredient Optimization

Let’s recap how to earn 1 point for Material Ingredient Optimization:

1 point may be achievable, using a sum of 5 products across 3 manufacturers
Take a scripted approach from Cradle to Cradle certified products and compliant Declare labels
Spec/sole-sourcing these products will ensure compliance (and may not be an option on federally funded projects
This will also get you 50% of the way to earning MIR Option 1

IEQc2: Low Emitting Materials

Ah, remember the good old days? You take an MSDS sheet, find VOC content, make sure it's under the limit, and you call it a day. That was sooooooo 2012 of us! Low-Emitting Materials now covers almost everything inside your building - from the typical paints and adhesives to the door frames, drywall, and anything else you can poke with a finger. LEED v4.1 made earning more than a point for this credit much more achievable, and you’ve got a pretty good fighting chance to earn multiple points these days, but it is definitely a case of less is more. There's now a whole new range of product categories that get tracked for compliance - but some of them are now much more trouble than they are worth. Don’t worry - we’ll tell you which you should focus on, and which you can forget.

Requirements for IEQc2 Low Emitting Materials

Use materials on the building interior (everything within the waterproofing membrane) that meet the low-emitting criteria below. Points are awarded according to Table 1:

Table 1. Points for low-emitting materials
2 product categories – 1 point
3 product categories – 2 points
4 product categories – 3 points
5 product categories – 3 points + exemplary performance
Reach 90% threshold in at least three product categories Exemplary performance or 1 additional point if only 1 or 2 points achieved above.

There are 8 total product categories, and you can pick and choose which ones to pursue (HINT! Don’t waste your time chasing all of them). Each category has a different requirement that must be met (because of course why would it be standardized?)

Here’s the breakdown:

Adhesives & Sealants - 75% Emissions Compliance, 100% VOC compliance (by volume or surface area)
Paints & Coatings - 75% Emissions Compliance, 100% VOC compliance (by volume or surface area)
Flooring - 90% Emissions Compliance (by cost or square footage)
Walls - 75% Emissions Compliance (by cost or square footage)
Ceilings - 90% Emissions Compliance (by cost or square footage)
Insulation - 75% Emissions Compliance (by cost or square footage)
Furniture - 75% Furniture Emissions Evaluation (by cost)
Composite Wood - 75% Formaldehyde Evaluation (by cost or square footage)

What is Emissions Compliance?

VOC compliance is pretty straightforward. It's same as older versions of LEED, wet-applied products need to make sure the VOC content (in g/L) is less than the referenced standard for that product type. Emissions Compliance is new for LEED v4/4.1 - for the most part in the US, all you’ll ever see is CDPH v1.2-2017 as your compliance standard (though projects opting into v4.1 from v4 can still use the CDPH v1-2010 standard).

If you care, this test measures the amount of emissions from products after time - VOC content is what’s in the can - emissions are how much is coming off after it's been installed. At this point, there’s no limit - it can emit like a smokestack as long as it was tested to measure those emissions using the CDPH requirements.

Every product must meet these emission requirements to count. If it doesn’t, it goes against your emissions budget. You can use products that don’t have the testing, but just not too many of them. You’ll see this information in any number of 3rd party certifications. Here’s an example from GreenGuard Gold from UL, IAQ from SCS, Green Label Plus from CRI. All show the testing standard and the end TVOC emissions.

What is the Furniture Emissions Evaluation?

To comply with the furniture emissions evaluation, products must be tested in accordance with ANSI/BIFMA Standard Method M7.1–2011 (R2016) and complies with ANSI/BIFMA e3-2014e Furniture Sustainability Standard, Sections 7.6.1 (for half credit, by cost) OR 7.6.2 (for full credit, by cost). If 75% of the furniture also complies with Section 7.6.3 in addition to 7.6.2, the category counts for exemplary level (90%).

You’ll find this information on GreenGuard Gold certificates from UL, or Indoor Advantage Gold from SCS.

What is the Formaldehyde Emissions Evaluation?

This one is much more complicated from the older versions of LEED where you could use manufacturers’ statements that they were free of added formaldehyde. Now, the two primary compliance routes are:

EPA TSCA Title VI or California Air Resources Board (CARB) ATCM for formaldehyde requirements for ultra-low-emitting formaldehyde (ULEF) resins or
EPA TSCA Title VI or CARB ATCM formaldehyde requirements for no added formaldehyde resins (NAF).

You need the actual EPA or CARB documents as well - you can’t just show a manufacturer letter stating they are compliant.

Inherently Non-Emitting or Salvaged: The Exclusions

If products are inherently-non-emitting or salvaged/reused, they automatically comply, they don’t need any testing, and they will count in your favor. Keep that in your back pocket - it will come in handy at some point! Most ceramic/procelain tile falls into inherently non-emitting, as does uncoated metals, stone, etc.

Strategies for IEQc2 Low Emitting Materials

While there are 8 categories of products available, you only need 4 of them to earn all 3 points. So what should I target? This is another case where I’m lazy. Yes, you could track every product for every category and try and get the teacher’s pet award, or you can laser focus on a few categories and knock them out of the park. And that’s what I suggest.

In fact, I suggest punt completely on Adhesives and Sealants, for 3 reasons. First, it’s the category that has the most products. You’re dealing with at least 20 all from different subcontractors. Second, from our experience, it has the least number of compliant products in the market place. Manufacturers just are not getting all of these products tested against the CDPH standard. Third, you’re going through dozens of submittals to get them all. The categories I suggest targeting can all be completed (in most cases) from individual submittals, and can likely be knocked out by 3 different subs. Of course, I'm lazy - tracking it and seeing how it shakes out never hurts.

That said, if I'm going the strategic route, I’ll go after Paints/Coatings, Flooring, Ceilings and Insulation. Paints tends to be a standalone submittal, with lots of compliant options. Even if you need to use something noncompliant, the odds it is more than 25% of your primer, flats, and eggshells is slim. Flooring is 1 submittal, maybe two for cove base or ceramic tile, but again almost every major carpet and VCT product is compliant, so there’s room for error. Your walls/ceilings/insulation are different submittals but probably the same sub. Lots of compliant products for all three and if you’ve really got some specialty products then pick a different category. If you need one in your back pocket, composite wood and/or furniture are available, especially if you don’t have a lot of it on site.

Can you track Adhesives & Sealants? Sure, knock yourself out. If you don’t end up earning it, it’s not hurting anyone. But we recommend that you save yourself the time, headache, submittal rejections, and everything else that comes with it. Trust me, you’ve got at least 20 different submittals you’ll have to check this on versus just looking at the paint submittal.

A few notes: Paints & Sealants - most of the major manufacturers (Benjamin Moore, PPG, Sherwin Williams) have CDPH testing done for a wide number of products. You may run into some specialty products that don’t have it - not to despair! This category is most easily tracked by quantity, and you’re likely using vastly more primer/flat/semi-gloss than any specialty application. The only biggie - floor coatings. If you’re doing some epoxy or other resinous type floor coating, it falls into paints - and you potentially use a lot of it.

Walls - this used to be a slam dunk, but updates to v4.1 are asking for windows, curtainwall, exterior doors, etc to be included in the calculations. I've yet to see a curtainwall with CDPH testing, so it can make this category difficult to achieve depending on reviewer.

Flooring: Almost all carpet and vinyl flooring have CDPH testing. Ceramic and porcelain tile are all inherently non-emitting. The flooring product category includes all types of hard and soft surface flooring (carpet, ceramic, vinyl, rubber, engineered, solid wood, laminates), raised flooring, wall base, underlayments, and other floor coverings.

Walls: While the national manufacturers have plenty of options, this goes well beyond just drywall. The wall panels product category includes all finish wall treatments (wall coverings, wall paneling, wall tile), surface wall structures such as gypsum or plaster, cubicle/curtain/partition walls, trim, interior and exterior doors, wall frames, interior and exterior windows, and window treatments.

Ceilings - Plenty of compliant options here. Just be aware it goes beyond acoustical ceiling tiles. This category includes all ceiling panels, ceiling tile, surface ceiling structures such as gypsum or plaster, suspended systems (including canopies and clouds), and glazed skylights.

Insulation: most major manufacturers have plenty of compliant options. The insulation product category includes all thermal and acoustic boards, batts, rolls, blankets, sound attention fire blankets, foamed-in-place, loose-fill, blown, and sprayed insulation.

Furniture: For dedicated office furniture, most major manufacturers have plenty of options - specialty furniture can get you. For projects that have a lot of workstations and standard office fare, this may be pretty easy. For other projects may be a challenge thus we keep this one in our back pocket. The furniture product category includes all seating, desks and tables, filing/storage, free-standing cabinetry, workspaces, and furnishing items purchased for the project.

Composite wood: Composite wood is wacky. IF a product doesn’t fall into another category, you address it here. We’ve seen it become much more cumbersome to get the actual CARB paperwork - thus keep this one in the pocket as well unless you really need an additional product category.

Adhesives & Sealants: We’ve already told you to punt. If you don’t, have fun tracking PVC cement, duct mastic, carpet adhesive, thin-set mortar, VCT glue, building sealants, construction adhesives, and everything else in a tube or a bucket. And get your calculators out because you need to quantify it all in a common volume. Have fun with the 4 oz can of CPVC cement, the 5-gallon bucket of flooring adhesive, and that tube of caulk. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Let’s recap the strategy:

Start your efforts with paints, flooring, ceilings and insulation
Check the finish schedule early and often, and if possible, review with the architect to roadmap product selection
Try and knock these out in as few submittals as possible, and move on.

Best Practices for Low Emitting Materials

The strategies we’ve provided will help you earn the Low Emitting credit, and likely the EPD and MIR credits as well. But you’ve still got to corral all of that information, get it stamped/approved, and track it all over months or years of construction. Here are a few other best practices for consideration to help make it as seamless as possible.

Sort of goes without saying but using your Green Badger project license makes this all so easy, so automated, so headache-free...
Roadmap as early as possible with the architects. We are seeing more and more architects detail out products to go for, but when they don’t, get on the same page and have a joint strategy to make sure you’re on the path to success
Use a LEED materials coversheet for your subcontractors. Making them fill this out solves a number of problems - it helps you nail down material cost and quantities in a clean manner, requires the sub to put some thought into LEED attributes, and gives you a way to cross-check the backup documentation.
Make sure the CPDH certificates are valid or at least within a year of the expiration date.
If you’re not using Green Badger, go ahead and create a LEED Low Emitting folder - you’ve got to submit ALL of them to USGBC, so having them in one folder you can zip up and upload at the end will make life a lot better come submission time.

Summary for IEQc2 Low Emitting Materials

Let’s recap how to earn 1 point for IEQc2:

Make sure you are using LEED v4.1!
Roadmap early with the design team
Focus on paints, flooring, ceilings and insulation
Verify and log your low-emitting products into a folder for easy submission to USGBC

Essential Playbook to Managing LEED Construction Webinar Download

IEQc3: Construction Indoor Air Quality Management Plan

Did we... did we finally... did we finally find a credit that isn’t a significant deviation from prior versions of LEED? OMG we did! The Construction IAQ Management Plan credit is essentially unchanged from LEED 2009, heck even from LEED 2.2! It took running through burning coals to get here, but alas – take a deep breath of (clean because we’ve had an IAQ management plan) air and exhale because this one is pretty straightforward. Develop and implement an IAQ plan that hits the SMACNA standards, don’t let stuff get wet, use filters if running the HVAC, and don’t smoke in or near the building. Boom, you’ve earned the credit.

Requirements for IEQc3 Construction IAQ Management Plan

Develop and implement an indoor air quality (IAQ) management plan for the construction and preoccupancy phases of the building. The plan must address all of the following.

During construction, meet or exceed all applicable recommended control measures of the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning National Contractors Association (SMACNA) IAQ Guidelines for Occupied Buildings under Construction, 2nd edition, 2007, ANSI/SMACNA 008–2008, Chapter 3.
Protect absorptive materials stored on-site and installed from moisture damage.
Do not operate permanently installed air-handling equipment during construction unless filtration media with a minimum efficiency reporting value (MERV) of 8 are installed at each return air grille and return.
- Immediately before occupancy, replace all filtration media with the final design filtration media, installed in accordance with the manufacturer’s recommendations.
Prohibit the use of smoking inside the building and within 25 feet (7.5 meters) of the building openings during construction. Smoking includes tobacco smoke, as well as smoke produced from the combustion of cannabis and controlled substances and the emissions produced by electronic smoking devices.

Pretty straightforward stuff (for once). If you’ve been on a LEED project, you’re likely familiar with all of these. The only that has changed from the older versions to v4/4.1 is to prohibit smoking from within 25’ of the building during construction.

What are the SMACNA measures?

The good people at the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning National Contractors Association (SMACNA) have put forth pretty straightforward measures to be implemented on your project - when applicable! Not every project will have every measure listed below - make sure your plan incorporates relevant measures - if you put something in your plan that you don’t actually implement, the reviewers are going to ask why it is documented. Kinda makes you wanna SMACNA a LEED reviewer, if you know what I mean.

Without further ado, here are the SMACNA Measures and examples of implementation:

HVAC Protection - Keep contaminants out of the HVAC system. Do not run permanently installed equipment if possible, or maintain proper filtration if it is used.
- Seal all ductwork, registers, diffusers, and returns with plastic when stored on site or not in service. Seal unfinished runs of ductwork at the end of each day.
- Replace all filtration media before occupancy.
- Do not store materials in mechanical rooms, to reduce potential debris and contamination to mechanical systems.
Source Control - Keep sources of contaminants out of the building and have a plan to eliminate any that are introduced.
- Use low-toxicity and low-VOC materials to the greatest extent possible.
- Develop protocols for the use of any high- toxicity materials. Isolate areas where high- toxicity materials are being installed and use temporary ventilation for that area.
- Prevent exhaust fumes (from idling vehicles, equipment, and fossil-fueled tools) from entering the building.
- Enforce the no-smoking job site policy.
- Protect stored materials from moisture because absorbent materials exposed to moisture during construction can mold and degenerate long after installation. Store materials in dry conditions indoors, under cover, and off the ground or floor.
Pathway interruption - Prevent circulation of contaminated air when cutting concrete or wood, sanding drywall, installing VOC-emitting materials, or performing other activities that affect IAQ in other work spaces.
- Isolate areas of work to prevent contamination of other spaces, whether they are finished or not. Seal doorways, windows, or tent off areas as needed using temporary barriers, such as plastic separations. - Provide walk-off mats at entryways to reduce introduced dirt and pollutants.
- Depressurize the work area to allow a differential between construction areas and clean areas. Exhaust to the outdoors using 100% outdoor air, if possible. - Use dust guards and collectors on saws and other tools.
Housekeeping - Maintaining a clean job site results in fewer IAQ contaminants to manage.
- Maintain good job site housekeeping on a daily basis. Use vacuum cleaners with high-efficiency particulate filters and use sweeping compounds or wetting agents for dust control when sweeping.
- Keep materials organized to improve job site safety as well as indoor air quality.
Scheduling - Sequence construction activities to reduce air quality problems in new construction projects. For major renovations, coordinate construction activities to minimize or eliminate disruption of operations in occupied areas.
- Keep trades that affect IAQ physically isolated on-site and separated from each other by the construction schedule. For example, schedule drywall finishing and carpet installation for different days or different sections of the building. Consider after-hours or weekend work if practical.
- Install absorptive-finish materials after wet-applied materials have fully cured whenever possible. For example, install carpet and ceiling tile after paints and stains are completely dry.
- If applicable, plan adequate time to conduct  a flush-out and/or perform IAQ testing before occupancy, in compliance with EQ Credit Indoor Air Quality Assessment.
- Remove all temporary filtration media and replace them with new filters before occupancy.

What about the Absorptive Material Protection?

Funny you should ask! There’s an acronym for this one: DLSGWIYB:

Don’t
Let
Stuff
Get
Wet
Inside
Your
Building

Ok, fine, I just made that up, but it pretty much gets to the point. Some materials on your project water doesn’t just roll off of, and if it gets wet and installed, there’s a mold issue as well as an overall warranty and all things associated. So let’s keep it dry!

This includes common items including:

Gypsum board
Ceiling tiles
Carpet
Really anything that can absorb moisture!

There are multiple ways to address this issue, from just in time delivery of products, so they aren’t spending time on site prior to installation, to elevate these materials off the floor while keeping them elevated and away from openings, to finally protecting them after installation by covering the carpet with walk-off paper to avoid trekking moisture and dirt onto it. None of it is rocket science. Just remember DLSGWIYB and you should be all set!

Strategies for IEQc3 Construction IAQ Management Plan

This credit is pretty straightforward to achieve. You need plenty of time to plan this out as none of really goes into effect until your vertical (for Interiors projects, you don’t have this luxury - you’ll have to show up on-site with a plan ready to go).

First off, identify which SMACNA measures are relevant for your project and include them in your IAQ management plan, which will have to be submitted as part of your documentation. Inform subs of the plan - make sure it is communicated AND enforced. Finally, document implementation with IAQ inspection reports (you’re using the Green Badger mobile app to do these instantly, right?). Take pictures and create reports at least monthly, if not more frequently. For new construction projects, this typically starts when HVAC equipment arrives at the site. For Interiors projects, it's pretty much day one.

Here’s what to include in your IAQ management plan:

Every project will need to incorporate HVAC protection - seal all ductwork, registers, diffusers, and returns with plastic when stored on site or not in service. Seal unfinished runs of ductwork at the end of each day. Replace all filtration media before occupancy.

For HVAC protection, the biggest challenge tends to be making sure the duct runs and grills stay taped throughout. Every sub working in the area seems to want to remove or damage your wrapped ducts, so inspecting this frequently will ensure any deficiencies are fixed in short order.

Housekeeping is necessary on every project as well - keep a clean jobsite, sweep up, use dust control and sweeping compounds and vacuum when possible.

Source control is also on every project and is likely things you're doing without thinking about it. It's a LEED project, so you’re already using low-VOC materials. Just make sure to keep them centrally stored so you don’t have buckets of paint everywhere. Provide ventilation if you’ve got onsite combustion or high toxicity materials inside the building. Enforce the non-smoking policy, which you’re already doing, and finally, keep absorptive materials dry!

Pathway interruption you may or may not have. If you’re working on a project with sections of the building finishing at separate times, consider hanging plastic sheeting to prevent contaminants from getting into the finished areas, and use walk-off mats to prevent pollutants from getting dragged into the building from all the onsite personnel.

Scheduling may be an issue. If possible, keep trades that affect IAQ physically isolated on site and separated from each other by the construction schedule. For example, schedule drywall finishing and carpet installation for different days or different sections of the building. Other items are referenced by SMACNA and include:

Install absorptive-finish materials after wet- applied materials have fully cured whenever possible. For example, install carpet and ceiling tile after paints and stains are completely dry.
If applicable, plan adequate time to conduct  a flush-out and/or perform IAQ testing before occupancy, in compliance with EQ Credit Indoor Air Quality Assessment.
Remove all temporary filtration media and replace them with new filters before occupancy.

NOTE: This one is pretty tough to document with photos even though LEED reviewers have been known to ask for it - take pictures of paint drying to show carpet wasn’t installed? Who knows, but try and get something on record.

Absorptive material protection is covered under Source Control, but you may want to have a section specific to it in your plan, because LEED reviewers need things to be blatantly obvious to them to not issue review comments (and even then it isn’t a guarantee). Remember - DLSGWIYB.

If you can get away without running the HVAC system, you’re set. If you do use it, because it can get awfully hot/cold out there, make sure MERV 8 filters are installed at each return air grille and return. Replace them throughout construction as they get dirty, and replace all filtration with the design-specified filters immediately prior to occupancy.

You’re going to need lots of pictures of those filters, as well as the make/model number so make sure you’ve got good records.

Last but not least, prohibit and enforce no smoking in the building or within 25’ throughout construction. Make sure you’ve got signage posted and that it is actually being enforced for onsite personnel. In your cannabis-friendly states, this includes cannabis (and vaping), so no pulling tubers by the building.

Side note: If you are going to do air quality testing or a flush out after construction it's a good practice to reference it in your plan as well. Even though the plan is for during construction, it's good to have in there. Now, if you’re using a template plan and you’re NOT doing testing or flushout - delete that section so the reviewers don’t ask about it.

Let’s recap the strategy:

Develop your IAQ Management Plan with all relevant SMACNA measures, and make sure to have specific sections for Absorptive Material Protection, HVAC use, and
No Smoking
Communicate that plan and expectations to all subs and team members
Once HVAC arrives (or pretty much immediately for Interiors projects), start doing IAQ inspection reports verifying all applicable measures at least monthly, if not more frequently.
DLSGWIYB

Best Practices for Indoor Air Quality Management

The strategies we’ve provided will help you earn the Construction IAQ Management credit, and may contribute to Indoor Air Quality Assessment if you’re going that way. Here are a few other best practices for consideration to help make it as seamless as possible.

Use an IAQ plan template that’s been vetted in the past on other LEED projects. There’s plenty of examples out there, so don’t start from scratch.
Don’t put off doing IAQ inspections, and don’t just take 10,000 construction photos and go back and try and dig out ones of your ductwork taped off. Go ahead and create standardized monthly reports (Sort of goes without saying but using your Green Badger project license just use the mobile app)
Make sure the smoking policy is clearly posted around the building exterior and enforce it.
Track all your filters during construction and prior to installation because the reviewers will ask about it.

Summary for IEQc3 Construction IAQ Management Plan

Let’s recap how to earn 1 point for IEQc3:

Use v4 or v4.1, it doesn’t really matter
Develop the IAQ plan early
Create monthly inspection reports

IEQc4: Indoor Air Quality Assessment

Another throwback LEED credit, simply renamed from Construction IAQ Management, Before Occupancy, to the much more glamorous Indoor Air Quality Assessment. You’ve still got two options: flush out the building with a whole bunch of outside air or hire someone to come and test the air. All in all, pretty straightforward for a LEED credit.

Requirements for IEQc4 Indoor Air Quality Assessment

Select one of the following two options, to be implemented after construction ends and the building has been completely cleaned. All interior finishes, such as millwork, doors, paint, carpet, acoustic tiles, and movable furnishings (e.g., workstations, partitions), must be installed, and major VOC punch list items must be finished. The options cannot be combined.

Option 1. Flush-Out (1 point)

Path 1. Before Occupancy

Install new filtration media and perform a building flush-out by supplying a total air volume of 14,000 cubic feet of outdoor air per square foot of gross floor area while maintaining an internal temperature of at least 60°F and no higher than 80°F and relative humidity no higher than 60%.

Path 2. During Occupancy

If occupancy is desired before the flush-out is completed, the space may be occupied only after delivery of a minimum of 3,500 cubic feet of outdoor air per square foot of gross floor area while maintaining the same temperature and humidity requirements as Path 1.

Once the space is occupied, it must be ventilated at a minimum rate of 0.30 cubic foot per minute (cfm) per square foot of outdoor air or the design minimum outdoor air rate determined in EQ Prerequisite Minimum Indoor Air Quality Performance, whichever is greater. During each day of the flush-out period, ventilation must begin at least three hours before occupancy and continue during occupancy. These conditions must be maintained until a total of 14,000 cubic feet per square foot of outdoor air has been delivered to the space.

Option 2. Air Testing (1-2 points)

After construction ends and before occupancy, but under ventilation conditions typical for occupancy, conduct baseline IAQ testing in occupied spaces for the contaminants listed in each path.

Path 1. Particulate Matter and Inorganic Gases (1 point)
Test for the particulate matter (PM) and inorganic gases listed in Table 1, using an allowed test method, and demonstrate the contaminants do not exceed the concentration limits listed in the table.

AND/OR

Path 2. Volatile Organic Compounds (1 point)

Perform a screening test for Total Volatile Organic Compounds (TVOC). Use ISO 16000-6, EPA TO-17, or EPA TO-15 to collect and analyze the air sample. Calculate the TVOC value per EN 16516:2017, CDPH Standard Method v1.2 2017 section 3.9.4, or alternative calculation method as long as full method description is included in the test report. If the TVOC levels exceed 500 µg/m3, investigate for potential issues by comparing the individual VOC levels from the GC/MS results to associated cognizant authority health-based limits. Correct any identified issues and re-test if necessary.

Additionally, test for the individual volatile organic compounds listed in Table 2 using an allowed test method and demonstrate the contaminants do not exceed the concentration limits listed in the table. Laboratories that conduct the tests must be accredited under ISO/IEC 17025 for the test methods they use. Exemplary performance is available for projects that test for the additional target volatile organic compounds specified in CDPH Standard Method v1.2-2017, Table 4-1 and do not exceed the full CREL levels for these compounds adopted by Cal/EPA OEHHA in effect on June 2016.

Long story short - flush out your building for 1 point OR test for particulate matter, ozone, and carbon monoxide for 1 point AND/OR a bunch of VOCs for a second point.

Strategies for IEQc4 Indoor Air Quality Assessment

Honestly, this comes down to does the team really wants this point and if so, do they want to pay for it or take a few weeks for it.

If you’ve got the time before the building is occupied, it's pretty straightforward - calculate how much outside air you’ll need (project square footage X 14,000 cubic feet), figure out how much outside air your HVAC system can provide (open up the dampers all the way for quicker turnaround) and let the system rock until you reach the thresholds. It will need to be conditioned somewhat, depending on location and time of year, so there may be a small energy penalty, but that’s about it. Just document flow rates, start/end times, to justify the flush out duration, and you’ll be good to go. Just make sure to reset any dampers that may have been changed back to original design settings, and to swap out all your filters, and you’re good to go.

If the building has to be occupied, you’ll do the same process to get at least 3,500 cubic feet before occupancy, then just dial it back and calculate how long you’ll need to run the system to reach 14,000 cubic feet.

For testing, honestly, just give the testing agency the requirements for the option(s) you want to pursue and they’ll give you a report detailing the results and hopefully, you comply. If you don’t, well, then you may have to dive into researching trouble areas or do a flush out and re-test.

Version 4.1 is much better for Testing Option 2 for VOCs than v4. There are significantly fewer VOCs required to test for, so life will be easier.

Let’s recap the strategy:

Choose between flush out and hiring a testing company
For flush out, try and implement before occupancy - either way, you’ll need to calculate how long to run the systems to reach 14,000 cubic feet per square foot.
For testing, send the exact LEED testing requirements to your chosen firm, and confirm they can meet them. The rest is on them

Best Practices for Indoor Air Quality Assessment

The strategies detailed will get you to the point, one way or the other. A few other tips:

Making sure low-VOC products are used will help nip any off-gassing in the bud.
Maintaining proper ventilation during the construction process will help dilute any contaminants.
Time of year might be an issue for flush out - running 14,000 CF of air in the middle of a 100-degree humidity streak is a burden on the HVAC system.
Have a narrative for flush out calculations and confirmation on system reset and filter change to documentation Path 1
Have test results that show everything under the LEED limits for Path 2

Summary for IEQc4 Indoor Air Quality Assessment

Let’s recap how to earn 1 point for IEQc4:

Make sure you are using LEED v4.1!
Pick a path - flush out or testing
Calculate system requirements based on project size
Verify your testing firm can test according to the LEED requirements and let them have it.

Summary to the Ultimate Guide

The prior sections should have gotten you up to speed on what the LEED requirements are for each credit and offered strategies to most easily earn those LEED points. Time for a high-level recap of what the actual LEED documentation process might look like in the real world.

We’ll skip past estimating, winning the job, and doing a bunch of preconstruction. We’re showing up on site. Time to set up the job trailer. This might require clearing an entire site, demolishing a building, or just plopping it down in a parking lot. Regardless, for any project over an acre, and ANY LEED project, the first step in the process is to put up a silt fence and install erosion and sedimentation controls around the property. Not only is this important for protecting our waterways, but it's also a legal/code obligation pretty much everywhere and can come with hefty fines attached to it. If you’re lucky, the civil engineer has crafted a nice, orderly erosion control plan and you can get the measures in place in short order so site work can begin. And thus, your LEED journey takes its first step forward.

Once your erosion control measures are in place, they need to be inspected and maintained for the rest of construction. This requires you, someone on your team, or a third party/subcontractor to perform inspections and ensure all measures are properly maintained. If Kyle drove over the silt fence in his Dodge Ram 2500 while slamming Monster Energy Drink, it has to be repaired back to a functioning state. First things first - figure out who on the team or which third-party will perform these inspections.

Then comes how - is there a local form you need to use? Do you have a company template? Do you have a really sweet mobile app that lets you do these inspections right from your phone? Some methods are definitely easier than others, but you’ll likely have local inspectors wanting to browse your ESC inspection reports, and you’ll definitely be sending a few over to USGBC at the end of the job.

How frequently will you be doing inspections? For LEED - at least monthly. Typically, teams are doing these weekly or bi-weekly anyway, and certainly after any rain events. The key component - who is doing them, when are they doing them and how are they storing them. Get used to it! You’ll be doing these reports and verifying these measures until the end of the project.

Time for foundations. The sites cleared, and the first concrete truck is rumbling onto the site - how is that first bit of construction waste going to be managed? Construction waste management (CWM) and tracking start with the first dumpster to leave the site. In fact, you should already have developed a CWM plan, identifying who the waste hauler(s) is going to be, what materials will be recycled, how dumpsters will be managed, and how that information will be communicated, tracked, and reported (you have, haven’t you?) Now it is time for implementation.

Get your dumpsters in location, make sure they are properly labeled, and inform your subcontractors what the waste management protocol is. Then get ready to track and log all your waste reports. You may get individual dumpster tickets, you may get monthly summaries - whatever the method, you need to stay up to date and track your construction waste until the last dumpster is pulled off-site after the punch list.

Let the submittals flow! Here’s where the fun really starts - the paperwork nightmare is about to begin! You did require your subs to use a LEED cover sheet, right? If not, it's not too late - most early submittals will not have too much to do with LEED - but it is imperative to put the responsibility on the subcontractor to identify what materials are used, what the cost for each material will be, and what LEED attributes they have (need help on verifying that? Green Badger’s database makes that a breeze with instant product verification and documentation for thousands of products).

Submittal review processes vary depending on the team’s workflows, but making sure LEED is part of the initial review process is important for two reasons.

If something gets approved from a performance aspect but has incorrect LEED (or none) it makes it that much tougher to change if something isn’t LEED compliant.
Second, making LEED part of the initial approval process means you’re getting everything together at one time, which is always a win.

This impacts a number of credits, and typically 6-8 points for a GC, so it's a big one. And if the wrong product gets used, you’re not ripping it out of the building.

As mentioned, your LEED submittal should include a cover sheet, which details the materials, costs, and any LEED attribute. If it is liquid-applied, it may also list quantities. The coversheet alone is not enough. You’ll need backup documentation for any claims made. The sub cannot just state something has 50% recycled content without providing a datasheet from the manufacturer that confirms that claim. Nor list an Environmental Product Declaration without actually providing one.

This is where it can get messy - you may get a submittal that shows no LEED attribute, when in fact a product helps in multiple ways, or a filled-out cover sheet without the backup documentation. The first case is tough - how are you supposed to know which products are LEED compliant if the sub doesn’t get you that info and the architect have been about as useful as a speedo on the Titanic. Welp, that’s where this guide comes in, and you should now know where to be extra diligent in looking for LEED-compliant products.

The second case often becomes a game of back and forth, back and forth, with the architect rejecting the submittal, you pushing the sub to get more info, the sub barking at the product rep. Lather, rinse, repeat. A month later, you’re in the same spot. Sometimes it is easier to just get that info yourself, and boy can we help with that!

Then, it is time to track and record. You likely don’t need the shameless plug that Green Badger makes that an absolute breeze, but no matter the system you choose to use, you need to record the product data, how it helps from a LEED perspective, and log and record all attributes under the Building Product and Optimization categories AND low-emitting material categories. Log every product and attribute correctly, so you’ll have an ongoing total, AND save all the backup documentation in credit-specific file folders so you’ll have them available for your LEED review.

You should be communicating your progress towards the LEED credit thresholds monthly so that everyone is comfortable the project goals are achievable and being well-managed. OK, so you’ve continued doing your ESC inspections, dumpsters are being tracked and reported, and you’re on top of your submittal game, and the building is sailing along. The walls are up and the ductwork shows up - time to dive into Construction Indoor Air Quality Management plans!

While you can read all about the various SMACNA measures in the IAQ section, the key takeaway is that now’s the time to make sure all the measures detailed in your construction IAQ plan are implemented and stay implemented the rest of the way. This often relates to subcontractor activities so they need to be aware of the IAQ plan and what expectations are. Whether it is keeping ductwork taped off, or drywall covered and elevated, both the GC and subs need to work together to ensure all the IAQ measures work and can be sustained throughout the remaining construction process.

No surprise, it's also time to document all these measures with photographs and inspection reports. If you’ve got that same sweet app as earlier, you can knock these out right from your phone and get PDF reports. If not, you’ll want to take photos of installed measures, make sure your date/timestamp setting is on, and pull them into reports detailing what’s going on. There’s not set required format - just that measures are in place and observed.

How frequently should you be doing inspections? There’s no set requirement for LEED - we suggest at least monthly. Again the key components to consider: who is responsible for doing them, when are they being done and how are they storing the reports or photos. Start when ductwork arrives, and wrap up while doing a punch list.

To maintain (or demonstrate) the good indoor air quality of the finished project, some teams opt to either perform air quality testing, or to flush out the building prior to occupancy (schedule allowing). Once construction has ended (including punch list), you will either flush the building with fresh air for a number of days (determined by HVAC and building size) or perform air quality testing.

Air quality testing is pretty straightforward. A testing company will come out and take air samples from various occupied areas, and test for a variety of contaminants, including particulate matter, inorganic gases, and VOCs. Pretty much all the GC needs to do is to contract with the testing provider - and keep your fingers crossed! If you pass, boom, you’re good to go and earn some points. If you don’t pass, then you may need to have some time to flush out the building. Either option just comes down to budgeting a bit of time and some money for testing.

Commissioning may also be occurring during this timeframe. Commissioning is basically a quality assurance inspection to make sure all those high-priced mechanical and electrical systems work as planned. You wouldn’t want a car that didn’t have its engines or brakes tested - why should you accept a building that hasn’t been given an independent test run? Typically this is driven through the owner so the GC just needs to coordinate for inspections and testing of MEP systems. You’ll likely have subs on sight for startup testing, and then you’ll end up with punch list items to make sure the building operates as intended. Then you’re done! Pack it up and send off your LEED documentation for review, kick back, and have a cold one. Every project operates just like this, right?

Summary of the Summary

And there you have it! You should now have the knowledge, skills, and ability to be a Green Badger Certified LEED Ninja. From navigating EPDS to VOCs to Snoop D O Double Gs, you’re now prepared for whatever LEED construction challenges come your way (until LEED changes yet again). Until then, stay safe, and kick back and enjoy a cold one. Lord knows you deserve it!

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