Green construction techniques are valuable tools for creating healthy learning environments that benefit both students and teachers. Around the country, municipalities are making green certification for schools less of an option and more of a given as they adopt new requirements.

Take Chicago, for example. Every school in the city must earn the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. This commitment to green construction in educational facilities is a trend that shows no sign of stopping. More cities are adopting these requirements every day.

In this kind of environment, any construction company that wants to continue winning bids for educational facilities needs to be able to keep up. So, if contractors aren’t adept at managing the LEED — or other green certification — process, it puts them at a competitive disadvantage. As these standards become more prevalent, contractors must be prepared to manage green certification requirements or they might not be winning jobs at all.

Better Learning Environments

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC)’s LEED certification for schools is, at heart, focused as much on student health and performance as it is on energy efficiency. According to the USGBC, a green school creates a healthy environment that is conducive to learning while saving energy, resources and money.

LEED certification ensures school designers are specifying and incorporating products that are healthy and are not releasing chemicals that are going to affect the respiratory systems of students. Green construction techniques help contractors build learning environments that are safe, comfortable and healthy while requiring less energy and upkeep.

Green schools have been shown to lead to healthier students and better test scores. In “Linking Performance & Experience: An Analysis of Green Schools,” researchers surveyed teachers and administrators at 12 green schools about the effects of the environment on student health and performance:

• 87% of respondents reported a positive impact on student health.
• 71% of respondents perceived a positive effect on student achievement.
• 71% reported a positive effect on student behavior.
• 85% reported their own health and productivity were positively affected.

Managing the Process

Successfully achieving LEED certification can be challenging, but it’s far from impossible. Project teams have to approach the process deliberately and with the proper attention to detail. Here are some thoughts to consider to make the certification easier and more manageable:

1. Do your research: When it comes to seeking LEED certification, the first step for project teams is doing your homework. The USGBC provides extensive reference guides and documentation to help teams understand each credit and requirement.
2. Set goals: If pursuing LEED certification, project managers and other stakeholders have to start out with a clear vision and plan for using green materials and construction techniques — not trying to figure out how to meet the requirements months or years down the road.
3. Keep detailed records: When pursuing LEED certification, proper documentation is king. Without having a system in place to facilitate day-to-day tracking and recording of materials and processes used, project managers set themselves up for failure. The last thing anyone wants to do is to try to recreate a paper trail for a project that has stretched out over several years.
4. Find better tools: A major drawback to pursuing LEED certification is the time-intensive, extensive documentation process. Look for software tools that can help streamline and automate documentation.

Summing It Up

As municipalities continue to embrace the use of LEED and other green certifications in public school projects, contractors have to stay up-to-speed on the requirements and the necessary documentation processes.

Healthy, safe environments mean greater student success, but, in the end, the use of green construction benefits everyone — the school districts that operate educational facilities as well as the students and teachers who use them on a daily basis.

Tommy Linstroth is founder and CEO of Green Badger, a cloud-based solution for equipping project teams of all levels of experience with the tools they need to document LEED as efficiently as possible.

The post LEED Certification and Green Schools appeared first on School Construction News.

With today’s greater emphasis on sustainability, energy efficiency and healthy environments for students, educational facilities can benefit from seeking Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.

Indoor Air Quality Boost

The LEED standard is designed to encourage the construction of environmentally healthy and energy-efficient facilities. Incorporating the LEED guidelines and best practices related to indoor air quality can especially benefit students.

The IAQ requirements in LEED v4.1, which should become the official standard in early 2020, have been updated to comply with the 2017 version of the California Department of Health standards. It’s a more recent standard for environmentally acceptable products and materials that can be used in construction and furnishing schools.

Improving indoor air quality in schools is all about protecting students. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that poor indoor air quality causes student illnesses and increases absenteeism. The flip side of the equation is that finding ways to improve air quality in schools ends up boosting student performance, according to the EPA:

IAQ problems can cause increased absences due to respiratory infections, allergic diseases from biological contaminants, or adverse reactions to chemicals used in schools. … Studies demonstrate a connection between improvements in IAQ — either from increased outdoor air ventilation rates or from the removal of pollution sources — and improved performance of children and adults.

An important component of the LEED certification is the section designed to reduce volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions indoors. These emissions can damage air quality and human health, according to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

LEED Planning Logistics

With USGBC transitioning to LEED v4.1, facility planners and managers for school districts have a golden opportunity to pursue certification, as the updated standards make several environmental credits more accessible. Project managers will have an easier time actually finding materials and building products that are compliant.

LEED v4.1 will remain in a pilot phase through early 2020 at the least. Until then, ongoing projects can opt into being evaluated using the LEED v4.1 standards on a credit-by-credit basis. This gives project teams the flexibility to use the LEED version they find most beneficial.

Communication and Record-Keeping

Local governments can end up spending hundreds of millions of dollars building new educational facilities. Although the funding bodies might balk at the idea of going green on a project, fearing it will inflate the cost, using basic green construction techniques and materials can be done without drastically increasing the bottom line.

Even better, green building practices focus on energy efficiency and durability. This means long-term budget savings on energy and maintenance costs and a higher ROI over the life of the facility.

When pursuing LEED certification, project managers must have practices in place to help ensure proper communication and record-keeping or face the prospect of failure. This starts with an ongoing dialogue among all the stakeholders — project owners and managers, designers and contractors — to establish a clear plan for using the right materials and processes.

Detailed record-keeping is also a requirement. Not having an adequate system in place allowing day-to-day tracking and recording of materials and processes used is a recipe for failure. Given the scale of educational facility construction, attempting to reconstruct a record of materials and processes used during a project covering years is virtually impossible. Without this documentation, efforts to achieve any sort of third-party certification for the project will not be successful.

Summing It Up

Green building practices matter in educational facilities. The built environment of schools can affect student performance and health for better or worse, especially when it comes to indoor air quality issues.

Receiving LEED certification for a project means more than bragging rights. It’s a pathway to improved quality of life for students and teachers, helping provide them with healthy facilities where they can work and learn in safety. Green building practices can reduce lifetime operational costs for educational facilities, increasing the ROI on what is often the largest capital expenditure for local governments.

Tommy Linstroth is founder and CEO of Green Badger, a cloud-based solution for equipping project teams of all levels of experience with the tools they need to document LEED as efficiently as possible.

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