By Tristan Roberts, Green Source the Magazine of Sustainable Design

The Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI) has begun a process to take closer control over the review of LEED project documentation. The move changes the practice that has been in place since early 2009, following inconsistencies and poor service that have been frustrating to LEED project teams.

GBCI was spun off from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in 2008 to run the LEED certification process, as well as the accreditation of LEED professionals. In turn, GBCI hired outside “Certification Bodies,” or CBs, to perform the LEED reviews, while it managed the overall process. Now, GBCI is taking over those reviews directly, both through hiring to increase its own capacity, and through contracting with LEED reviewers—a closer arrangement that has more in common with the earlier USGBC-run system than with the more recent system of CBs.

Explaining why news of the shift has come out informally through blogs, GBCI president Peter Templeton called it an “internal shift” and downplayed its newsworthiness. Referring to the use of CBs as a pilot program, Templeton says, “We’ve been conducting our internal review of the pilot since last fall, and it has been very clear to us is that the CB model has put too much distance between us and our customers.” Inconsistent reviews of LEED credits—with some teams reporting identical credit submissions being accepted in one case and rejected in another—and customer service issues have become “too great for us to ignore,” Templeton said.

One success of the CB model that will be maintained, said Templeton, is its timeliness. He cited internal figures showing that 94 percent of reviews are currently on time, which is up from 45 percent at the start of 2009.

With 27 percent of current LEED-registered square footage outside the U.S., Templeton said, “We’re also looking at technical capacity for reviews ‘in country,’” including “local knowledge of those markets and factors that those projects need to take into account as part of certification.”

For newly registered projects the change is already in effect—those are being assigned to GBCI, rather than to a CB, for review. Previously registered projects will most likely continue to work with their current CBs through 2011, although Templeton said that reassignments could start to be made after review teams are hired later in 2010.

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