INNOVATION & DESIGN PROCESS (ID) PART #3

Section 1.3 Professional Credentialed with Respect for LEED for Homes. Although not required, a LEED AP (e.g. Professionally Credentialed Person) is recommended to be involved and lead the project. The thought process is fairly simple. If you are going to build something to certain third party specifications, it is probably a good idea to have someone on the team who is familiar with the process and can help guide the team. Before we started to officially offer the LEED for Homes to customers, we built six houses for practice. In the first few houses we built, we made some mistakes that might have disqualified the homes from being certified by the program. They homes far exceeded state building code, but there are 18 prerequisites you must follow and points are lost forever if work is not completed properly. Bottom-line, it makes a whole bunch of sense to have at least one person on the team who is credentialed.

As a side note, it also takes time to get sub-contractors up to speed. Sub-contractors are bit like old dogs. Yes…it is hard to teach old dogs new tricks. We found, some sub-contractors willing to change, but most will not. This means a builder will need to replace many of the sub-contractors. Although the sub-contractors I work with are not professionally credentialed per sea, they are qualified to build “green” homes because they have learned through our work together.