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

Share

David asks: After you register a project can you still view the past CIRs the way we could before?

Answer: Hi David, thanks for your question.

Since the deadline for project registrations under USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for New Construction version 2.2 was last June, all new project registrations will be under the new LEED rating system, version 3 (aka LEED 2009). This also means that all new project registrations will utilize the new version of LEED Online (https://www.leedonline.com), which must be accessed with Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6, 7 or 8, versus the old version (https://leedonline.usgbc.org/Login.aspx).

Credit Interpretation Rulings (CIRs) were available for view and citation under the previous version of LEED Online under the “Public Rulings” tab at the top of the page. Recently a new tab appeared on the existing version called “Project CIR”, which reflects the change implemented last summer, as described below.

"Effective June 26, 2009, credit interpretation requests (CIRs) submitted by any registered project will no longer be vetted by USGBC or its LEED Technical Advisory Groups. As a result, CIR rulings will now be applicable only to the project that submitted them. For LEED version 2 projects, rulings on CIRs submitted prior to June 26, 2009, will be honored until they are retired by USGBC or incorporated into general USGBC-issued project guidance, such as through errata or addenda."

This means that now, when you get a question ‘officially’ answered, the answer will be only known to you and your project team (unless you decide to share it) and even if you do decide to share the response, the response from GBCI would not set a precedent for other projects. So, in the new version of LEED Online, I did a bit of searching around and it would appear that there is not a way to access the searchable database for old CIRs. Which, if you think about it, makes sense since they’re not applicable anyway.

If you’re still interested in researching previous CIRs (before June 26, 2009) for reference, you can find that database on the USGBC website without registering a project at all at http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=1603&. Just remember, that these interpretations and rulings were supposed to have been incorporated into the new v3 reference guides, so technically, the CIR library wouldn’t be needed and I assume will be phased out altogether eventually.