It is Official: "GBCI Certification Process Evolving"

Posted on April 2, 2010 by Timothy R. Hughes

Darwin Very Gradual Change We Can Believe InThe official word is now circulating that GBCI and USGBC are dramatically altering the inspection and certification process for LEED certifications.  Last week, I posted the very surprising information that major changes were potentially in the works for GBCI certifications based on a comment at a seminar I attended.  GBCI's initial comments on the blog post appeared to reflect that the initial information was slightly off, but the thrust of problems and resulting changes to the third party inspection protocol appeared accurate.

I received a report from a good friend of ours, Jerry Therrien of Therrien Waddell Construction, that USGBC Maryland has circulated the following official announcement under the tag line, "GBCI Certification Process Evolving":

GBCI concluded its evaluation of the 'pilot' in which global certification bodies were engaged to assist with LEED project certification. The expectation was that this model would improve capacity and allow GBCI to scale the certification process while maintaining the necessary rigor and level of customer support. What GBCI discovered, however, was that it put too much distance between GBCI and its customers and hampered efforts to provide the clarity and consistency that project teams need to complete the certification process.  

Given this, GBCI will gradually assume direct management of certification reviews over the next two years. This change should be seamless to project teams. GBCI will use a combination of staff reviewers and contracted review teams to keep certifications flowing through the pipeline during the transition.

I have two editorial reactions to this.  First, after pushing the outside inspection regime so vocally only a year ago, this change represents a major shift in direction.  My initial reaction continues to be if it is not broke, why fix it?  There clearly must be widespead and significant problems with third party credit reviews to dramtically reverse course like this.  I have heard some very limited grousing in this direction about issues, but nothing too significant to force a change like this.  Perhaps our clients and friends have been lucky.

My second reaction is to say kudos and great job.  It takes a lot of organizational guts to recognize a  problem and step up and fix it even if it means completely reversing direction.  It was a bold initial move and it is a bold course correction.  The cavitation is perhaps a little disconcerting, but I for one would rather have organizations making the best decisions based on the best information boldly instead of sitting around and doing nothing when faced with problems.  That is what leadership is all about.  

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Is USGBC Going To Gut GBCI Administered LEED Certifications?

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Timothy R. Hughes

yo-yos In 2008, the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) announced it was planning to shift its internally run certification of buildings to independent certifiers administered by a sister non-profit, the Greeen Building Certification Institute (GBCI).  A speaker at an USGBC - National Capital Region event declared last Wednesday that USGBC was taking steps to reverse this direction and bring the LEED certification process back in house to USGBC.

The outsourcing to GBCI and third party certifications was initially described as adding greater independence.  Commenters also discussed the potential for removal of conflicts of interest, first with the initial transfer of testing and accreditation from USGBC to GBCI a year prior to the transfer of certifications.  Last year, USGBC faced reports of significant delays in the certification process.  Most notably, our friend Vandana Sinha of the Washington Business Journal reported in May 2009 on, "a backlog of hundreds of LEED certification requests that has stretched processing periods from what should be five weeks to closer to five months."  USGBC touted the new shift to GBCI, coupled with extensive additional managed third party reviewers, would wipe out the backlog by June 26.  As detailed in our article for ABC-Metro, "Green Overgrowth", review times were still estimated by USGBC staff at twelve weeks in August 2009.

We have not heard much anecdotal grumbling over review times in the last few months.  GBCI staff indicated last week that review times generally are within the estimtaes of 25 business days for preliminary construction phase reviews and 15 business days for final construction reviews.  Assuming this is true, it appears that the backlog as been worked off.  How much is due to efficient adminstration as opposed to an evaporating construction pipeline due to the tanking construction economy is a valid question. 

It is against this historic backdrop that we must view the casual bombshell dropped by Stuart Kaplow during the USGBC - NCR event last week.  Mr. Kaplow is the Chair of USGBC Maryland.  Mr. Kaplow also described some specific struggles and frustrations with the certification process in the wake of GBCI administration where credits were misinterpreted by reviewers and historic positions were ignored during the process.

This is admittedly preliminary information I have heard and digging around on line produced nothing.  There certainly is no official announcement or position expressed by either USGBC or GBCI.  This raises some questions for our readers:

  • What have your experiences been with USGBC versus GBCI administered certifications?
  • Have the review times in fact come back down to the promised time frames?  If so, is this a function of more reviewers or the economy?
  • Assuming the information is correct, is this a transfer of just administration of the program, or is the outside third party certification piece in question as well?

A special thinks to ABC for permission to reprint our piece from Building Washington, Volume 24, No. 3.

Update (2:00 pm est, 3/22/2010):  In our comments, the GBCI has provided an official response to our blog post.  For the benefit of our readers who follow the blog post by RSS feed, here is the first paragraph of that reply (please click through to the post to see the complete comment):

There has been some misunderstanding about recent process changes at GBCI, the third party that provides certification for LEED projects. GBCI is bringing the technical review of project documentation in house over the next two years rather than continuing to manage the process exclusively through other certification bodies. This move will allow us to have closer technical oversight of reviews and more direct communication with our customers to ensure consistency and clarity throughout the process. This doesn't change anything project teams are doing now.

We appreciate the comment and clarification, as well as the delicious nuance this adds to the discussion.  It appears that:

  1. The plan is not to transfer control back to USGBC from GBCI for the LEED certifications as initially indicated during the presentation discussed above; however,
  2. It appears there are in fact substantive and substantial changes anticipated to the current certification regime;
  3. GBCI in fact is taking at least some level of technical review back "in house";
  4. I am struck in particular by the "ensure consistency and clarity throughout the process" language ... that suggests that process changes were needed to reign in and create consistency amongst the various third party outside bodies.  While the detail is shifted a bit, that clearly fits with Mr. Kaplow's description of process and credit review issues.

Thanks to USGBC and GBCI for responding so promptly and providing an update on this important topic!!

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