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LEED LAB

Students conducting feasibility studies

of the built environment

at UC Santa Cruz

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Presentation “Roadmap”

Two Different LEED Programs
LEED EBOM and Campus Sustainability
What does a Feasibility Study look like at UCSC?
Campus Wide Results
Individual Building Analysis
Conclusion

“

(Andy) Roadmap/Signposting (1 slide total; slide 4)

Before we jump in, we wanted to give you a quick breakdown of how we have organized today’s presentation
First, we wanted to briefly describe the difference between LEED for New Construction and LEED EBOM. In this project, we used the LEED EBOM guidelines for three already existing buildings here on campus— McHenry, Digital Arts Research Center, and Engineering 2.
Next, we are going to delve deeper into LEED EBOM’s point system and how we used their parameter it to analyze our buildings. We are also going to compare the UCSC campus sustainability plan to LEED EBOM and how they can be used together.
After that we will describe our process as this year’s pilot “LEED Lab” and how we decided to conduct feasibility studies of the three aforementioned buildings.
Following the process we will discuss the results of our study in two different sections: Campus Wide Results and Individual Building Analysis. This is because many policies or action plans are campus policies, but there are still instances where the buildings differ—especially in regards to energy usage and occupancy.
Lastly, we conclude with our suggestions for the future and an overall look at what this experience taught us through the lens of sustainability.

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Student motivation in a sustainable future

To use a methodology to gather information to pursue a challenging project with autonomy while having the guidance of mentors when looking at sustainable future.

Figure 3.1

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2017-2022 CAMPUS SUSTAINABILITY PLAN

Campus’ local response to UCOP’s UC-wide greening initiatives
2017-18 Progress Report
LEED Lab is a way for students to engage with campus’ sustainability initiatives
Feasibility study informs strategies: 1.3, 2.3, 3.3, 5.2, 5.4

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UCSC Sustainability Plan

Strategy 2.3:

“Continue to achieve LEED Silver and strive for LEED Gold (V4) for new buildings and, for labs, meet at least the prerequisites of the Laboratories for the 21st Century (Labs21).”

GOAL 4:

“Involve all students in experiential learning in the natural and built environments that comprise the campus as a living laboratory.”

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LEED Measures Sustainability Plan

Sustainability Plan has objectives but not always clear metrics for identifying

Baseline information about a building, ex. Occupancy estimations
Progress towards objectives

Ex. Campus Procurement:

What is our progress?
We were unable to find someone who could provide information about procurement.

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Built Environment

Buildings have huge environmental impacts.
Green Building in practice:

Maximize occupant health and productivity.
Use fewer resources.
Reduce waste and negative environmental impacts.
Decrease life cycle costs.

Rating systems allow for a check up

man-made structures, features, and facilities viewed collectively as an environment in which people live and work.
Buildings have a substantial impact on the health and wellbeing of people and the planet, both in their creation and operations, .
Buildings use resources, generate waste and are costly to maintain and operate.
Green building is the practice of designing, constructing and operating buildings to maximize occupant health and productivity, use fewer resources, reduce waste and negative environmental impacts, and decrease life cycle costs.
Rating systems are essential in keeping up sustainable building operations and maintenance. Although a building can be environmentally friendly in its design, it an be very harmful in its operations and vice versa. An older building can update its maintenance and operations in order to keep up with new sustainable technologies.

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What is LEED?

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
Most widely used green building rating system in the world.
LEED provides a framework to help create healthy, high efficient and cost saving-green buildings.
Four types of LEED certification standards
LEED has standards for multiple building types

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LEED for Operations and Maintenance (EBOM)

Awards credits based on performance

Operations are dynamic, adaptive, and traceable
Maintenance and building users engage with the way the building is run

The lifetime energy use of a building is 80-90% of its total usage

T. Ramesha, Ravi Prakasha, K.K. Shukla, 2010

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LEED EBOM Credit Categories

Sustainable Sites

Water Efficiency

Energy & Atmosphere

Materials & Resources

Indoor Environmental Quality

High

Mid

Low

X

LEED EBOM provides a a credit score card in order to run a building through in order to give estimate for points.

Score card

These represent the 5 overarching categories

So for sustainable sites

IPM, Alternative transportation rates, habitat and biodiversity

Water efficiency

Indoor plumbing, fixture fixing efficiency, water efficient landscaping

Energy & atmosphere

this is also an important category because this is where energy star ratings fall under, those we will explain later but the gist is that if your building must be within a certain energy star rating threshold or else it will not qualify for LEED.

Refrigerant management; ozone protection

Campus has technichens with EPA cert to handle refrigerants and report to the state of CA.

Materials and resources

Sustainable purchasing and solid waste management

Indoor env quality

Green cleaning policy, occupant health

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Using LEED for Existing Buildings, Operations, and Maintenance

Positives:

Accountability mechanism for maintenance and operations
Monitors the most crucial phase of a building’s life

Negatives:

Cost
Less well known
Difficulty navigating the particular management structure of a building, esp. at a campus

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How We Use LEED

LEED Lab uses LEED as an assessment tool

Certification is an end goal
Lots of impact can be had without certification

Expensive to certify
Only accessible to wealthy institutions

Sam

There are a lot of criticisms with this system. Due to cost of certification, LEED does not affect bottom-up change. Mostly large, wealthy institutions can afford to certify with LEED. This is a carrot for large institutions to stand out among their competitors as certifiably green. Smaller institutions experience a stick, wherein lack of certification implies less a sustainable building/campus.

This is not necessarily the case. LEED is rating system which can be used to assess the sustainability of a project. Certification does implies a building has been awarded a certain number of points; no certification does not mean an uncertified building is less sustainable than a certified one.

LEED presents a tall financial barrier of entry to smaller institutions, indeed a great number of small institutions may have a larger footprint than a smaller number of large institutions. Programs such as BIT offer a less intensive, yet still impactful rating system to capture this lower price-point market.

We use LEED as an assessment tool. In this feasibility study, our primary goal was not certification, it was to investigate where a building relation to LEED criteria, and make a judgment, based on customer discovery, user stories, and empirical evidence from the LEED scorecard how feasible it would be for our buildings to certify.

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LEED Certification vs.

Our Feasibility Study

Certification is a more thorough process than a feasibility study

We’re assessing the likelihood of successful certification

Requires substantial data on utility usage, procurement, waste streams, etc.

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LEED Certification vs.

Our Feasibility Study

Our goal was to assess the building’s current progress towards certification.
Understand where building efficiency might improve.
Create a roadmap for future retrofitting and LEED certification preparation.

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LEED Certification vs.

Our Feasibility Study

Conducted the study over the course of the academic year, quarter by quarter

Familiarization with LEED, determining buildings to study, and collecting information
Challenges with timeline and balancing other academic obligations

Outcome: comprehensive feasibility assessments for McHenry Library, Engineering 2, and Digital Arts Research Center

Sam

Quarter by quarter

Fall: familiarizing ourselves with the LEED cert system

Working through the certification handbook and understanding the credits system

Understanding general building functions and processes

Winter we focused on selecting our buildings, teams, and first steps

We tried to select a diverse range of buildings, distinguished in usage, location, size, so on
Formed teams to tackle each building
As a lab we formed the outline of how we’d distribute the campus-wide information

Spring was were we dove into collecting data for our specific buildings

We contacting building staff and departments involved with building operation and maintenance
Reached out to campus departments regarding policies in procurement, cleaning, waste management, energy consumption and tracking, etc.

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Irrigation
Food Purchasing
Heat Island (polarizing)
Construction Waste
Construction Material Policy
Habitat & Biodiversity
Landscaping Maintenance

Campus Wide Policy Adherence

Integrated Pest Management
Purchasing (office supply)
Green Cleaning Policy
Waste Policy
Purchasing Green Cleaning
Diversion Rate
Transportation (campus wide alternative route rate)

*

Izzy

One of the first steps we took when tackling our feasibility studies was to divide up LEED categories into building specific vs. campus wide policy. After going through this process we came to find many more categories were campus wide policies instead of building specific, which reflects the nature of a university.

Here the check marks represent categories where we had written policy that adhered to LEED standards as well as data providing evidence of follow through leading us to believe UCSC is a strong contender for gaining points.

The check minus represents categories where we had policy that met leed standards and either found data that was outdated or hard to fully comprehend.

Lastly, the X represents categories where we either did or did not find a policy and/or data and that data led us to believe that UCSC would need to invest more in order to qualify for the LEED credit.

Which describes where we have written policy that adheres to efficient standards but no data to back it up (phrase differently)

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This is a Photo from EnergyStar.gov showing two types Energy Usage measurements.

Site energy is the amount of energy used by the building at the site, as reflected on utility bills. This might be more familiar, but is less encompassing than the alternative measure, source energy. We give both scores. From a building perspective, site EUI makes more sense; from a campus perspective, source EUI is more informative for campus-wide initiatives since it gives a broader understanding of energy use.

�EPA recommends:

“EPA has determined that source energy is the most equitable unit of evaluation. Source energy represents the total amount of raw fuel that is required to operate the building. It incorporates all transmission, delivery, and production losses. By taking all energy use into account, the score provides a complete assessment of energy efficiency in a building” -- EPA website

Thus, source energy will be a much larger number since it takes into account how and through what means the fuel used to produce energy travelled from extraction sources to your building. This follows the ethos of LEED EBOM versus LEED for new construction: the way things are operated matters, over the life cycle the fuel follows from extraction to use.

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McHenry Library

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Building Specific

Credit Potential

Building Specific Credit Potential

Water Efficiency	Water fixture flow rates below LEED maximum. Pursue mid-high confidence
Waste Stream	Has labelled bins all over Pursue mid-high confidence
Energy Usage	Site: 66.5 kbtu/sqft Source: 142.t kbtu/sqft

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McHenry Challenges

Complex Structure

the way people use the space
energy requirements of the space

Estimating Occupancy

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Counter

McH main floor (2nd floor)

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Engineering 2 (E2)

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Building Specific

Credit Potential

Building Specific Credit Potential

Water Efficiency	The water efficiency is great based on the consistency for all faucets and water consumption utilities. Pursue high confidence
Waste Stream	E2 reflects the current situation for the rest of campus Pursue mid confidence
Energy Usage	E2’s energy usage is great in comparison to the buildings size. Pursue high confidence

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Engineering 2

Challenges

Sustainable Workplace Practices
Waste Management
Cleaning Supplies Policy

E2 faces some common challenges.

Sustainable Workplace Practices

A common odreal that is faced campus wide, but important at E2 is the enforcement of Sustainable Practices in the Workplace.
For instance, as we did our walk through with our mentors we noticed that there were a few overnight problems. A few examples include:

Electronics being left on, air conditioning being left on, and windows were being left open.

These problems were not fixed until the next morning and often can cause an unneeded spike in the energy usage.
Although this doesn’t seem like a huge challenge for E2, this happens frequently and increases the building’s annual energy consumption.
This challenge can be easily resolved and would reduce the total energy usage for the building by updating and promoting Sustainable workplace practices.

Waste Management

Just like the rest of campus, E2 is facing some waste stream issues in regards to recycling practices. With campus Resource Recovery working hard to improve its relationship with the the city and become compliant with stricter recycling protocol, Dimeo Lane, and the county, we beleive that the diversion effort will be much better this time next year

Cleaning Supplies Policy

In addition to Waste Management, Cleaning Supplies policy are facing some supply issues as well.
As andy and I did our own walk through we went through each floor checking the type of cleaning products used by the departments in different rooms, conference rooms and the community kitchens.
Many of these products are not LEED approved and are not regulated. Leading to different products used on each floor differently and what is convenient for the department
There isn’t a enforced cleaning supply type. Departments are meant to use

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Digital Arts Research Center

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Building Specific

Credit Potential

Building Specific Credit Potential

Water Efficiency	Water efficient faucets and fixtures up to LEED standards. Pursue high confidence
Waste Stream	No food waste stream Unable to identify confidence
Energy Usage	EUI: 93.8* Energy star rating: 70 Specialized equipment Pursue mid confidence

Water efficiency

Digital Arts RC facilities in great shape when it comes to faucet and fixture LEED EB standards,

The restrooms Faucet flow rate: 0.5 gpm -- gallons per minute

That just meets the maximum flow rate for faucets!

Toilet flush rate: 1.6 gallons per flush

That again meets the LEED maximum toilet flush rate of 1.6 gpf

And the Urinal flush rate is 0.125 gpf -- so that’s a pint of water

This is significantly under LEED for Existing Buildings maximum of 1 gpf (an eighth)

We are confident that this building will receive the associated LEED EB water efficiency credits

Waste Stream

What we do know is there is little to no food waste stream at DARC

Partially due to its location

Not close to any campus food services

And there is no food services within building

That mean No compost bins, only trash
few recycling bins in large rooms
And we noticed a Few clean paper bins

But over all we were unable to accurately gauge the likelihood of receiving these credits from LEED Existing Building

Energy Usage

The EUI (Energy Use Intensity) is 93.8, this is good, nearly 25% lower than the median of similar buildings

-- but we cant say they’re truly similar buildings because we used

the term “”office”” to categorize our building and Engineering 2 did as well -- they have some rooms with special

equipment that generates more power,

This means that EUI rating

should not be as heavily considered as it might be

in a full certification

We decided to do this because there was no better term available in the Energy Star options

Our actual energy star Score which does factor in EUI is very close to LEED EB standards

At the rating of 70 we’re in the top 30% of buildings - almost to the current EB standards of (75%)

Over all we have high to mid confidence that the relevant credits should be pursued

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Digital Arts Research Center Challenges

Building managers operations
24 hour lab spaces
Lack of building specific waste data, etc.
Specialized equipment for art production

building managers would like to be involved in sustainable operations but their responsibility but so much or their responsibility centers around maintenance requests, security, and even planning. Really all around day to day operations versus big picture operations.
Too busy with these short term priorities to devote their resources to the long term sustainability goals that they would like to strive for

As opposed to data collection like:

Occupancy
Waste stream
Utility metering and efficiency

Variety of specific spaces

A few common/classrooms
But primarily Workshops, labs and offices

Lack of data on various inputs and outputs

water and gas utility consumption
Waste stream breakdown and specifics

Equipment increases baseload energy consumption, which leaves less room for energy star rating improvement and LEED energy points.

General use of building is unique and hard to classify within LEED
But energy consumption efficiency appears to be adequate for Sust. Plan goals
These machines may have low hours of operation but we do not know of any usage record

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The Benefits of Using LEED EBOM

LEED certification is legitimate and well-known
Status and competition between schools and businesses
Standardization of sustainability
Establishing accountability in pursuit of sustainability

(Andy) How is LEED Beneficial as a Whole? (in the conclusion)

Now we just took a few slides to talk about the issues with LEED, but we would be remiss if we did not mention the very helpful aspects that are easy to overlook
Even the simplest characteristics of LEED make it easy to subscribe to. It is the most well-known green building certification process in the world, and rightfully so since it is from the USGBC. It’s instant legitimacy results in a higher rate of participation than other similar programs.
The sense of status that comes with the various levels of certification is important with LEED too. Becoming a gold or platinum ranked building is one of the most prestigious sustainability awards for a building, and it is especially enticing for competing businesses and schools. For example, when UC Santa Barbara has more LEED EBOM buildings than UC Santa Cruz, we try to compete by becoming more sustainable and certifying our buildings. This competition is one of the best incentives LEED offers
LEED is also great at standardizing what sustainability means in regards to the built environment. While its parameters are not perfect, they have set standards for energy, water, indoor air quality, cleaning practices, etc. This is assisted with the implementation of user friendly tools like EnergyStar. This makes it easy to compare the various metrics of buildings much easier, as there is a baseline system to compare a specific building to.
Becoming LEED EBOM certified is a lengthy process that has many distinct steps, and only lasts for a maximum of five years. This holds the building operators and, in our case, many who work in various departments on campus accountable for keeping the building green and sustainable. There are many “hoops to jump thru” which require a team of dedicated people to attain sustainability. This is a very important thing that LEED implicitly establishes, as sustainability must be consciously and persistently pursued, and isn’t something that you earn once.

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What we Learned about LEED:

Relevance to the Client

LEED EBOM scorecard has a wide range of requirements for certification
Clients may have particular goals with their buildings that LEED does not emphasize as highly.

what we ended up learning about LEED and it’s relevance to it’s client

Is that the LEED EBOM scorecards has a

USGBC weights LEED categories based on what is most sustainable.
This is often determined by economic and political climates.

Secondly,

Many clients will have specific goals for their buildings, but LEED doesn’t emphasize this as highly.� - LEED assigns points based on the opinion of an audience which does not necessarily align with what a particular institution or building manager wants to achieve by using LEED.

Ex. A building in Arizona might value water conservation more highly than LEED, but since LEED’s average client may not need to have such strict water conservation criteria this will result in the needs of the client's main concern not being full resolved.

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What we Learned about LEED:

Where Buildings Excel / Fail

Evaluating some categories in a feasibility study is subjective.
Deciding how feasible it is for a category to be fulfilled depends on a lot outside of our control.

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Insights About the Buildings

McHenry:

Waste Stream
Building Availability

Digital Arts Research Center:

Variety of workspaces
Low waste output
Passive cooling

Engineering 2:

Previously Certified
Advance Metering Tracking Systems
Immediate Maintenance Service

McHenry:

Students dusting books anecdote

Waste Stream

All three waste streams
Bins for compost, trash and recycling

Building Availability

Being able to go to this building at anytime of the day is amazing.
Lack of availability in closed off portions of the building.
The building is very accessible, but has the closed off portions.
Varying occupancy and energy
Energy usage varies alot

Engineering 2 (E2):

Previously Certified

There is a lot already done to make this building to be as efficient as it can be.
The building was set up to be efficient as it can be, but the upkeep and update.
Intricate system to to cool and heat air in the building through the water usages.

Advance Metering Tracking Systems

All data is continuously monitored
Shows data for specific water lines, energy outlets and and air conditioning

Immediate Maintenance Service

When there are malfunction problems due to the building system unable to remotely fix it, there are maintenance services that are effective immediately.
Dan Miceli told us that when Mai

Digital Arts Research Center:

Variety of Workspaces

Unique spaces mean unique hours of operation

Office space for the most part though
And that the labs are open 24/7

Low Waste Output

This is partially because of actual purchasing or food service.

Passive Cooling

The building it built with steel infrastructure that allows the building to be cooled to a comfortable temperature.
Keeping the bulding cooled without energy usage

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Scores in kbtu/sq.ft.	Site	Source
McHenry	66.5	142.7
E2	48.9	116.5
DARC	45.4	93.8

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Suggestions for buildings to Pursue LEED Accreditation

McHenry:

Highest visibility on campus

Most complicated structurally.
Most diverse in usage patterns

Engineering 2:

Most viable candidate for LEED certification.

Previously certified

Digital Arts Research Center:

Least amount of data

Newest construction

Each group can talk about the building individually and how it can be accredited.

Josh can talk at the end to summarize it all up and do the comparing between the buildings.

COMPARATIVELY WHY EACH BUILDING HAS POTENTIAL:

McHenry:

Good option
It was retrofitted most recently in 2011 with many improvements to be green and efficient
Such as its energy usage and great waste system.
The size and amount of data that wasn’t easily accessible makes it difficult to certify the building though

Engineering 2

Proabbly the best buildings to become LEED certified.
It has a lot of new advanced technology
Previously certified and it only needs small adjustments to become recertified.

Digital Arts Research Center:

Being built the most recently it was recommended to be a easy building to certify since it meets newer standard requirements
Still a good option
For instance as dylan mentioned their water fixtures aren’t in compliance with LEED required, but these are relatively easy fixes.

I can also categorize them as E2 being the most viable and then saying the other 2 that should be pursued to be LEED accredited, but this is because it doesn’t have a sufficient amount of data to be cetified in our LEED feasibility requirements.

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Takeaways from LEED Lab

What you learned? And what was positive about the experience?

Student experience in this?

Would we recommend this to a student next year?

Andy

Josh

Work with a small group (unique)
Two mentors with individual attention
And project based

Dylan

was unaware of the number of departments that

work together to operate these buildings successfully.

The complexity of operations and maintenance for single buildings

not to mention a campus is a huge undertaking

gained a lot of respect for the building O&M employees and admin

We were initially frustrated with the complexity of the operations

departments structure, but in hindsight i can see that each branch is necessarily focused

rather than a few overarching departments where things could

easily slip through the cracks

Izzy

Sam - ability to access information is as good as having information.

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Made Possible By

IDEASS
LEED Lab
UCSC

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Thank You!

A Special Thanks to:

Tamara Ball

Dan Ackerstein

Peter Ouzts

Dan Miceli

Sara Gilchrist

IDEASS Lab

Lastly, I would like to thank you all for coming out to today’s event!
We are truly blessed to have support from our schools staff and hope that we were able to provide a helping hand in our pursuits to make improvements in the UCSC Campus
I would like to also give a special thanks to ____________________.
Without these people our feasibility study would not have been feasible!
Each person helped us in either how we would collected our data and analyzed it or how we conducted our research.
Through this process we were able to develop the skills to lead this project on our own.

So thank you very much for coming and please ask us any questions you may have! Have a great rest of your day!

also supported us as we, the students, led our project and constructed our feasibility study.
They gave us the information and skill not only to conduct this research, but to lead this project on our own and supported us in this process.

Suggestions:

SUE:

Fuck the leaves add some relevant content (ideally)

Make the text on the slides more concise (replace with pictures where possible)

1st part takeaway: LEED is expensive, we care about operations and thats where efficiency can be improved (thats it for 10 minutes of presentation)

A couple slides on an overview of LEED key principles (compare to green building certification alternatives) Is LEED the most appropriate for our project? Why?

Maybe include differences between New Construction and EBOM

DAN:

It is hard to calculate ventilation without occupancy

Same language to emphasize shared metrics, WE have high confidence can be earned, the building failed/achieved passing LEED threshold.

Work on connecting slides (general flow of presentation)

Too much in here about occupancy! Remove from building specific challenges slides?

*We’re on the same team* = COLLABORATIVE TONE: encourage don’t harp on shortcomings

Find or emphasize anecdotes, issues common buildings----difference in water fixture

Energy star is a tool of identifying excessive energy usage.

Highlight EB whenever mentioning LEED

Fixture analysis is a way to compare all 3 buildings and which on you are able to invest in to maximize water efficiency.

Define LEED acronym

Upfront est. the difference in a more direct way

Upfront: acknowledge things that are good, building operations that are executed efficiently.

Energy EFFICIENCY not usage

PETER

Add graphs and easy visuals

Limit transitions between people talking and work on them

Can we print out slides to have a better visual of the flow of the presentation

Can we add our own experiences into the overview of our process

Did we get what we wanted out of it?
Would we recommend this LEED Lab to other students
takeaways