ABSTRACT Construction project owners worldwide require compliance with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) green building rating system as a means to meet sustainability goals. Despite its popularity, the LEED certification process can still be cumbersome for project teams without clear guidance. This study focuses on a school district in the United States committed to certifying its high volume of new schools. The analysis includes understanding the efficacy of the district’s LEED requirements by comparing them to the final LEED scorecards of 16 completed projects. The results indicate an incompatibility between the owner’s required LEED credit targets and the actual outcomes, confirming that simply requiring LEED certification is insufficient to reach specific sustainability goals. The significance of this study is the identification of four strategies that owners with a high volume of construction projects can use to successfully facilitate and streamline the LEED certification process: (a) develop a targeted LEED scorecard, (b) create LEED documentation templates, (c) integrate LEED into specifications, and (d) align design guidelines with LEED goals.

School closures during the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the importance of in-person learning on child health and wellness. Improving indoor air quality (IAQ) is a critical undertaking to keep children in school during outbreak events. Our primary objective was to evaluate the impact of Enhanced IAQ credit achievement among LEED-certified schools on the ability to remain open during the pandemic. In this analysis, schools that achieved LEED Enhanced IAQ credits for increased ventilation or outdoor air delivery monitoring were assigned to the treatment group; LEED schools without these credits were in the control group. We used LASSO regression to select potential confounders for treatment models. Inverse treatment probability weights were used to control for confounding in mixed effects Poisson models in which the response variable was the number of COVID-related school closure days during the 2021-22 academic year. Although effect estimates for the treatment were not significant, they were consistently in the inverse direction (incidence rate ratio (IRR) [95% CI]: 0.90 [0.80, 1.01]). Models may have lacked power to detect significance due to many schools having zero COVID-related closures during the 2021-22 academic year. An important secondary finding was a 53% decrease in COVID-related closure days (95% CI: 7%–77%) associated with a 10% increase in county residents who reported 'Always' using a mask in public. This study contributes to the current understanding of the indoor environment and airborne disease transmission. Efforts to monitor and improve IAQ in schools are important avenues to support community, student, and staff health.

Green building and sustainable development efforts are helping to reduce negative impacts associated with the built environment. Yet, current global challenges require societies to move beyond incremental improvements toward truly healthy ecosystems, communities and local economies. Regenerative development is a practice that seeks to build capacity and capability in people, communities and natural systems to renew, sustain and thrive. LENSES (Living Environments in Natural, Social and Economic Systems) is a guiding framework and process for regenerative development that aims to transform the way that people design, develop and live for the benefit of all. This paper will outline regenerative development, describe the process of using the LENSES Framework, and highlight a project in Victoria, Australia, where regenerative development and LENSES have been used to guide the master planning process.

Charrettes are collaborative, interdisciplinary workshops commonly used in the programming and or design phases of sustainable building projects and often utilized in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) projects. Charrettes are implemented to increase collaboration and communication across diverse building professionals and stakeholders. However, minimal empirical research documenting the outcomes or impact of charrette processes or identifying whether specific charrette characteristics or combinations of characteristics actually contribute to an overall increase of LEED points exists. The purpose of this research project was to research salient characteristics of charrette processes and to observe their impact on the LEED points achieved. Methodology included a focus group of nine building professionals and a survey of 66 building professionals who had participated in a LEED-certified project(s). Characteristics derived from the focus group discussion were used to develop the survey instrument. Implementing at least one charrette during a project was shown to increase the LEED points achieved by an average of seven points. Three charrette characteristics, however, were shown to reduce the magnitude of positive impact. Specific characteristics to avoid are (1) holding a charrette as a LEED strategy or LEED checklist meeting; (2) having a defined or structured agenda; and (3) having project goals already defined prior to the charrette(s) taking place. Overall, results suggest the charrette process has the potential to provide significant benefits, but to fully realize such a benefit, the charrette should not include factors that limit a group's ability to produce creative ideas, goals, and innovative solutions.

For the last few thousand years, people have constructed increasingly complex structures to shield themselves from the outside world. However, this seems to have come at a price to their physical and psychological well-being. In many instances, buildings trap high concentrations of contaminants, imprisoning occupants in an atmosphere of toxins that often make them ill. This chapter looks at the process of incorporating natural elements in the built environment—a strategy referred to as biophilic design—which promotes both physical and psychological health. Why is there not widespread adoption of living walls and other biophilic technologies? What factors weight the decision to incorporate biophilic design elements—specifically living walls—into a building? Awareness of the decision-making process to incorporate biophilic design elements into buildings provides valuable insight for green technology advocates, property owners, building designers, and architects.

Sustainability advocates see an immediate, pressing need to move beyond incremental improvements toward profound transformations on pressing economic, social and environmental issues. A framework called LENSES (Living Environments in Natural, Social, and Economic Systems) is presented that can address the type and scale of change necessary. This framework outlines a process to help communities and project teams create places where natural, social and economic systems can mutually thrive and prosper. LENSES is both a process and a metrics tool designed to help teams establish goals and to explore effectively relationships and interconnections in order to create restorative and regenerative places. The strength of LENSES lies in its ability to help groups consider concepts and elements often missing in other frameworks and tools such as inclusivity, financial sourcing, cultural resources, regional context, education, shared authority and governance, and on-going prosperity. LENSES provides a clear path to facilitate movement toward regenerative, place-based solutions in the built environment and beyond.

This study is an analysis of the initial building costs for two Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) banks and eight non-LEED banks with similar building types and sizes located in western Colorado. The purpose of this study was to compare the costs of these banks, and to assess costs directly associated with LEED certification. The analysis examines total building costs, square footage costs, soft costs, and hard costs per MasterFormat Division. The study finds that the building costs of the LEED banks are similar to and within the same ranges as non-LEED banks. Additionally, the direct cost associated with seeking LEED certification is estimated to be below 2% of the total project cost.

While previous research has been conducted on concrete production to improve sustainability while retaining durability and constructability, this research focuses on construction practices in slab-on- grade screeding and how project management decisions can impact eCO2 emissions. A comparative life-cycle assessment of manual and laser screed was performed in a traditional 100,000 SF slab with 6" thickness. The study aimed to determine the effects of a slab-on-grade's equivalent embodied carbon (eCO2) in commercial projects. Two embodied carbon calculators (EC3 and Green Badger) were used to examine the differences between the two methods. Industry professionals provided actual commercial project data to determine the impact of laser screed compared to manual screeding. This study found that laser screeding reduced schedule, workforce requirement, and concrete waste for the slab-on-grade installation. These results demonstrate an important reduction in embodied carbon due to reduced worker transportation and concrete manufacturing emissions. The findings also indicate that project managers can improve the environmental sustainability of their projects by using alternative techniques, such as laser screed equipment, compared to manual screeding.

A small group of construction and facilities managers within a local school district encouraged the district superintendent to develop policy for the integration of green building practices. The school district established a long-term partnership with a green building research institute in the Construction Management Department that has benefitted graduate students, the university, the school district and the community. Through a series of agreements and research projects, the university performs applied research into aspects of school building such as applying the LEED rating system, benchmarking other green schools, studying effects of cleaning on indoor air quality, and investigating sustainable finish materials. The school district, thanks in part to the university partnership, is now nationally recognized by government entities and the U.S. Green Building Council. The school district-university partnership is one that could be replicated throughout North America, creating programs that provide on-going benefits to students, the school district, the university, building professionals, and the faculty and students who inhabit the schools. This paper illustrates the process used to establish the partnership, the specific research projects performed by the graduate students and the outcomes of the program, both in terms of the school buildings and the multiple benefits derived by the students, the university, and the community.