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July 29, 2008

USGBC Names Groups to Perform LEED Certifications

This building at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, houses sculpture studios and galleries and received a LEED Platinum rating from USGBC in 2007. Starting in 2009, USGBC will hand the certification process over to third-party companies.

In May 2008 the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced that it would be outsourcing LEED certification to the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI) and, through GBCI, to independent certification bodies (see EBN Vol. 17, No. 6). USGBC has now named the ten companies that will be certifying LEED buildings beginning in January 2009.

The designated certification bodies are:

• ABS Quality Evaluations, Inc. (www.abs-qe.com)
• BSI Management Systems America, Inc. (www.bsi-global.com)
• Bureau Veritas United States (www.us.bureauveritas.com)
• DNV Certification (www.dnvcert.com)
• Intertek Group (www.intertek.com)
• KEMA Registered Quality, Inc. (www.kema.com)
• Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance, Inc. (www.lrqa.co.uk)
• NSF International Strategic Registrations (www.nsf.org)
• SRI Quality System Registrar (www.sri-i.com)

After the changeover, project teams will still submit their LEED applications through the LEED Online website managed by USGBC, but the reviews and ultimate certifications will come from these companies. USGBC has not yet explained how it will determine which companies will certify which projects. If it continues to follow typical International Organization for Standardization (ISO) practices, however, eventually project teams will be able to make that choice.

– Nadav Malin

For more information:

U.S. Green Building Council
www.usgbc.org

Green Building Certification Institute
www.gbci.org

DISCUSSIONS

Reader-contributed comments related to BuildingGreen.com - USGBC Names Groups to Perform LEED Certifications. Comments are listed with newest at the top.

LEED certification outsourced Posted by Jerry Yudelson on Jul 29, 2008, 06:23 PM
Great idea; I have been advocating for several years moving toward the ISO system of quality assurance certification. Now how will this transition handle the large portion of the 12,000 or so LEED projects currently registered, not yet certified, which have contracts with third parties to provide the certification documentation? How will all of that be handled without massive cost and disruption?

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