I’ve said it before, I’ve said it again, but getting the correct pieces of information from subcontractors early and often makes life sooooo much easier for managing the LEED construction process. When you’ve got to chase them from there to the moon, well after their scope of work is complete, it can be dang near impossible to get that last piece of required info. Shoot, I’ve been on a project where we couldn’t get the drywall sub to give us the damn material cost and drywall was hung 5 months ago! Just to get one freaking dollar value! For the love of all things warm and fuzzy (do badgers come to mind?), it is a simple question!
There are some pretty easy best practices that can really facilitate the documentation for materials and even low-emitting products. Here’s one that you think would be commonplace, but at least in this Badger’s neck of the woods (literally), we don’t see all that frequent – using a required LEED cover sheet for all subcontractors. By having a coversheet, where you require the subcontractor to provide cost and any relevant LEED data (recycled content percentages, distance from extraction and manufacture, VOC content, etc), you get all this information up front. Or reject the submittal and send it back. Pretty straightforward. Send it out to all subs at the beginning of the project, let them know it is required, boom – you’re on your way. No more getting 175 page submittals from the subs saying, “Here’s my LEED stuff”. This puts the onus on them to find the exact LEED information, making them part of the process, and making your life easier.
If you don’t have a LEED coversheet for materials – don’t dispair! The Badger is happy to share ours with you – just drop us a line here and we’ll send it over.
Great post!