LEED Certification distinguishes building projects that have demonstrated a commitment to sustainability by meeting the highest performance standards. Once a project is registered, the project team begins to prepare documentation and calculations to satisfy the prerequisite and credit submittal requirements. It is helpful to have a LEED Accredited Professional as the project contact and team member responsible for coordinating the LEED process. Documentation should be compiled electronically; see Preparing To Submit For Certification for important details.

Interest in LEED resulting in certification delays

As of May 2010, over 2000 projects have registered and over 450 have submitted for LEED certification. As a result of the continuous growth, and spurred by the recent pricing structure changes, approximately 25% of submissions have arrived in the last 3 months. In all, this is a positive for green building… with a surge of certifications providing a clear indication of LEED Canada’s continued strength and value to the market place!

While the Council is excited by the surge in market up-take, we are now addressing the reality of having to determine how to process and support such high volumes of submittals during a time when resources are required for the development and launch of the new LEED Canada NC 2009 rating system. The CaGBC is aggressively trying to address the workload. New staff and process efficiencies have already been put in place, and we continue to seek efficiencies within the process to better service the market in Canada. In addition, we are increasing the number of volunteer Technical Advisory Groups providing us support in order to help increase our ability to resolve technical issues such as Credit Interpretation Requests.

Certification by the CaGBC is only initiated when capacity permits. Once initiated, certification generally proceeds in a manner consistent with our published guidelines (see our Certification Process Overview for details). As outlined in the Overview, certification requires on the order of 13 weeks. In addition, certification requires that project teams prepare submittals in response to the reviews performed by the CaGBC; the time required for these submittals is an important factor in the total length of time required for certification.

It is important to note that more complicated files, and poorly assembled files, require more time. We recognize that by providing better information, we are able to help project teams put together better LEED submissions. The CaGBC has introduced an important workshop that we encourage everyone to consider: the LEED Canada Documentation Course. This workshop provides guidance on how to prepare a clean submission for LEED Canada NC 1.0 projects.