LEED Consultancy
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), is a green building certification scheme developed by the United Stated Green Building Council. Since its inception in 1998, LEED has been the most known and widely used green building certification scheme in the World and has quickly became popular in Turkey too.
Advantages of LEED Certification
LEED certified building designs go beyond the laws and regulations. LEED certified buildings become more energy efficient with efficient water use and they damage the environment less and these buildings as a result turns into a more healthy liveable spaces. In addition, LEED certification increases the value of the building, provides international recognition and prestige to the buildings and builder companies/institutions.
LEED certification can be obtained for the following building types:
New Construction and Major Renovations: It is the appropriate rating system including all interiors, for new constructions and renovations of commercial buildings and / or high-rise (higher than 4-6 stories) residential buildings.
Existing Buildings: All types of existing buildings with completed construction process (excluding homes) can be considered under this category. Existing Building criteria emphasize more on operation and maintenance issues of the buildings. Therefore, often without the need for additional investment costs, the certificate can be obtained with the help of environmentally friendly procedures which are applied to the operational issues.
Core & Shell: Scope of the project includes assessment and evaluation of environmental performance of the core and shell parts and the common areas. In particular, trade centers, offices and shopping centers (where the construction of the interior spaces is left to the buyer or lessee) fall into this category.
Retail: Under this category, banks, restaurants, supermarkets, clothing stores, electronics stores, etc. could be evaluated as a single or chain stores. These kinds of stores / chains can be evaluated under LEED Retail-NC if they are in a single building; they are evaluated under LEED Retail-CI if they are located in a shopping mall.
Commercial Interiors: LEED project category which includes all the interior projects except stores. It is an ideal system especially for interior projects in the core and shell office buildings. With its quickly applicable scope together with its direct environmental effects it is preferred by many interior office projects in Turkey and in the World.
Homes: All residential buildings up to 6 floors can be evaluated under this category. Also, Residential buildings with 4 to 6 floors can be considered under the LEED New Construction. In this category especially for Residential homes sustainability and human health / comfort are important issues that need to be considered. Compared to the applications developed for the commercial buildings, it’s comprised of different criteria. In this system different than other systems, auditors authorized by the USGBC “Green Raters” are handling the task of monitoring.
Schools: It is the appropriate evaluation system for K12 school buildings (kindergarten to high school), including new constructions and /or major renovations.
Healthcare: Within this system, all hospitals, nursing centers, private / public long-term care centers and homes for the elderly can be evaluated.
Altensis provides the full range of LEED consulting and management services to its customers who would like to build an environmental friendly green building. Since 2003, Altensis’s professional staff whom have extensive experience and intertwined with LEED projects, provides full range of solutions in order to fulfill the requirements of LEED certification system including Commissioning and Energy Modeling services.
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