Thursday, July 10, 2008
Green Building Grows Up, Raises Mainstream Design and Construction Issues
A story in the online edition of McGraw-Hill’s Engineering News-Record outlines some of the risks and unintended liability issues of what advocates might think of as “conventional” green design, such as green roofs, operable windows, daylighting and cork (rapidly renewable materials) flooring. The bottom line: don’t “guarantee” anything, including any specific level of LEED certification and certainly don’t warrant that certification will be done by any specific time. Products and systems might not be available or might not be of the quality required, etc. At a project meeting held today, to consider “going green” for a new shopping center, similar issues were raised with respect to the developer’s marketing claims that the project will achieve a LEED certification. It was interesting to me that the developer’s lawyer was in the project meeting, undoubtedly wanting to get informed about the LEED aspect and to make sure we weren’t putting anything in the tenant’s leases that we couldn’t live up to after the project was completed. A similar report appeared recently in Constructor magazine, subtitled “Green construction can expose project teams to unreasonable expectations and a new set of risks.” The first task then of many green building projects will be to understand and manage these risks, on behalf of the entire project team, as well as the building owner or developer.
Posted by Jerry on 07/10/2008 at 07:59 PM
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