As the March 31st, 2009 deadline approached for professionals seeking to become accredited in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, the U.S. Green Building Council and the Green Building Certification Institute ("GBCI") were met with such unprecedented demand for LEED exam registration that their website crashed and they were forced to extend the deadline for registration by 24 hours in an attempt to process the high volume of registrations.

The USGBC owns the LEED Green Building rating system and the GBCI oversees the accreditation program that churns out LEED Accredited Professionals. Since LEED was launched in 2001, approximately 75,000 professionals have earned their LEED AP.

There are two LEED AP exams that candidates may take before the June 30th, 2009 sunset of the current LEED rating system: LEED NC 2.2 and LEED CI 2.0.

LEED for New Construction (NC) 2.2 is the more well-known of the two. It is designed for individuals who want to have hands-on involvement with the LEED for New Construction Rating System which is designed to guide and distinguish high-performance commercial and institutional projects, including office buildings, high-rise residential buildings, government buildings, recreational facilities, manufacturing plants and laboratories.

The LEED for Commercial Interiors 2.0 exam is also very popular and may be more suitable for those individuals, such as real estate brokers and property managers who are on the front-lines of tenant space buildouts, involved heavily with Tenant Improvements ("TI") and/or representing tenants who are seeking space that is certified sustainable. According to the USGBC, LEED CI is the recognized system for certifying high-performance green interiors that are not only healthy and productive places to work, but also are less costly to operate and maintain. Furthermore, LEED for Commercial Interiors gives the power to make sustainable choices to tenants and designers, who may not have control over whole building operations.

Candidates who study for the LEED exam often take many months to prepare by memorizing specific aspects of the LEED AP requirements, credit and prerequisite definitions, credit intents, potential applications and standards bodies that relate to them. In order to get a leg-up, and pass the LEED exam on their first attempt, LEED AP candidates often take advantage of LEED Exam Prep Courses, some providers of which boast a 90% first time pass rates for their participants. However, the two leading LEED AP offline prep course providers, Clean Edison and Everblue Energy, do not offer prep courses for LEED CI, reducing the number and quality of options available to LEED CI candidates.

As a result of the lack of offline prep materials for CI, many Commercial Interiors candidates are seeking to create their own study groups, pay experienced LEED APs to tutor them individually or as a group, and/or seek out online LEED CI prep courses that are specifically focused on LEED CI. Indeed, until the passing of the April 1st, 11:59 PM deadline, many would-be LEED APs were considering whether to rethink their choice of LEED CI as a specialty area specifically because of their worry over not having enough prep material and study options to access.

"I'm seriously reconsidering my decision to choose LEED CI, even though I think that's the specialty area that makes the most sense for me because of my job," reported Melissa, a New Yorker who is extremely excited about the green building industry but who is a relative newcomer to the field of sustainability. "I am concerned because I cannot find an offline LEED CI Prep Course available anywhere. Online prep seems to be the only option."