A recent article in the South Florida Sun Sentinel touches upon issues associated with getting LEED certified. According to the article's author, Doreen Hemlock, the current 'green' certification process can take about a year and can cost up to 5 percent of the value of a project, just for the required paperwork and verification tests. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) recognizes the problem and is expecting that LEED v3 will help streamline the process.
The USGBC will launch version 3 on April 27, 2009. New projects will be required to register for LEED v3 rather than v2 after June 27th. And December 31, 2009 will be the last day of the free migration period, during which currently registered projects can transition to LEED 2009 and LEED Online without paying a new registration fee.
With LEED v3, the project certification process will move to the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI), an independent non-profit that was established in 2007 with the support of USGBC. The goal will be to improve the speed with which projects can move through the certification process. I guess time will tell just how much more streamlined the certification processes and Online v3 tool will be. The LEED v3 rollout plans are described below.
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