LEED® Project Management and Facilitation

Brightworks provides LEED Green Building training, program design and project management through a team of experienced LEED-accredited professionals.

In our experience, LEED's greatest challenge involves the flawless management of complex information across a range of project team members and persistent attention to detail. Using a proprietary set of LEED business tools, we can either set you up to effectively manage your own LEED project or we can facilitate and manage your LEED program for you, from your first eco-charrette to your final LEED review by the US Green Building Council.

Our no-nonsense approach to LEED program design and project management is oriented around your top and bottom lines: what measures most effectively either save you money or create competitive advantage for you, in product differentiation, positioning, or market leadership. We can also help you identify incentives such as utility rebates, publicly-funded technical support, and state tax credits to support your project.

Succeed at LEED

Successful pursuit of a LEED program depends on the exacting management of a very complex set of information and responsibilities. This is without question the greatest challenge of LEED: keeping track of what must be done, when, by whom, and making sure that all team members know their responsibilities and have the information they need to perform those responsibilities effectively.

The Brightworks LEED Program Model

Define Objectives

This is done in two meetings: first an executive overview with the team representing the building owner or facility manager. The second is an eco-charrette, an intensive collaborative design session including representatives from as many of the core project teams as possible, including owner, architect, general contractor, mechanical design team, mechanical engineer or design-build firm, energy modeler, landscape and civil teams, representatives from local utilities (if they have incentive programs or provide technical assistance), and possibly specialists such as lighting designers and glazing specialists, depending on the program requirements of the project.

The eco-charrette also serves to initiate the integrated design process, a collaborative, facilitated approach to project design and execution that captures the interactive opportunities available from a carefully coordinated process. The integrated design process requires coordination and participation of experts from diverse fields who usually work in linear sequence without significantly informing each other's work, and typically generates design innovations not found in the conventional design and development process.

The eco-charrette is facilitated by the LEED project manager, who is also responsible for facilitating the on-going integrated design process.

Allocate Responsibilities

The next step is to identify specific tasks associated with each design or performance objective, and assign each task to a responsible firm. A typical LEED program can involve 150-200 separate tasks allocated among 6-8 team-member firms. This task identification and allocation is done by the LEED manager.

Establish 'Buy-in'

It is essential that parties identified as responsible for specific performance requirements explicitly accept, in writing, responsibilities for each individual task. During this phase of the process, it is not uncommon for a party to question whether a task correctly belongs in their responsibility, and tasks are often re-assigned. Once buy-in is established, a definitive final task list is generated and distributed to each participating firm.

Track the Process

Next comes the actual design and construction process, which can last for a couple of years. During this process, the LEED facilitator must answer questions regarding the execution and requirements associated with particular tasks, coordinate interactive design meetings between team members, and generally keep the LEED program on track. During this phase, extensive documentation is accumulated and must be organized in an orderly fashion to meet the LEED submittal requirements at time of project review.

Drive Innovation and Inspiration

A big part of succeeding at green building and LEED depends on keeping team members excited about the reason they are incurring all the additional responsibilities associated with a LEED project. Ultimately, LEED and Green Building are about transforming building practices to be more consistent with a sustainable planet. Keeping team members enthusiastic, and creating an atmosphere where creative innovation in a constant effort, must be a constant focus of the LEED manager's responsibilities.

Prepare for Review, and the Review Process

Once the project is complete and the documentation and submittal requirements are in order, it is time for review by the U.S. Green Building Council. If all goes according to plan, certification is soon to follow.

Visit our resources to learn more about green building and the environment.

Contact us to discuss how we can serve your project.