Advice provided by: Sarah Gudeman, LEED AP, EIT, Morrissey Engineering, Inc.

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Petra asks: My project has gone through one round of Design Submission and Appeal. We would like to change a couple of design features to obtain two appealed credits. Do we need to re-appeal (for $500 each), or can we re-submit the new information and design changes with our Construction Review?

Answer: Petra, first I feel the need to preface this answer with a disclaimer. I don’t profess to be an expert on the LEED rating system (I haven’t had a LEED project to date in which the Green Building Certification Institute, GBCI, hasn’t requested any clarifications on any of my submittal documentation). Nor am I in any way affiliated with the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC’s) development or interpretation of credits.

That being said, I’ll not go ahead with my thoughts in regard to your questions. Hopefully it will be helpful, but ultimately what USGBC and GBCI dictate goes as far as what is and isn’t acceptable for a credit. I don’t think that a credit interpretation ruling (CIR) would be necessary in this case since your question is more administrative and procedural than technical or interpretive in nature.

From the USGBC website, once the Design Appeal fee is paid and all credits have been marked as complete, the Design Appeal Review proceeds. Again, the GBCI review team reviews appealed credit templates and supporting documentation and will provide a ruling of ‘Anticipated’ or ‘Denied’ for each appealed credit. There is no clarification round for appealed credits. The project administrator accepts or appeals the review comments. If Design Appeal Review is accepted, the project will move into the Construction Application phase. If not, the project will move back into the Design Appeal phase.

From what I understand, your project attempted two credits that were ultimately denied in the design submission. Then you appealed those two credits and they were denied during the appeal process, correct? The way I see it, you should be able to resubmit the materials as part of the construction review, but unfortunately the more I think about it that doesn’t seem the most likely course this will take.

I think what you’ll have to do is appeal the appeal ruling again and clarify what you’re doing to ensure that your project meets the credit intent for these appealed credits, so in other words, do not accept the appeal ruling. I’m afraid that if you accept the appeal as denied, then you won’t be able to attempt those credits again during the construction phase of the application process. Again, I think you’ll want to confirm with GBCI and USGBC about this through an administrative inquiry (a phone call or email), but this is my best guess as to what approach you’ll have to pursue. Please let us know how it turns out and if we can be more helpful.