Washington—Since its introduction, the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED pilot credit library has been strongly embraced by LEED users as a flexible, 
interactive mechanism for testing proposed credits in the marketplace and gaining real-time feedback on their usability as well as their ability to meet a credit’s intent.
“Innovation doesn’t follow a schedule, so the LEED pilot credit library provides the thousands of volunteers around the globe who are engaged in LEED development with the ability to introduce credit ideas for testing as they emerge,” said Brendan Owens, VP LEED Technical Development. “This unique flexibility allows LEED to evolve interactively and accelerates the market transformation LEED was created to catalyze.”
Initially launched with seven credits as part of the LEED 2009 roll out, the pilot credit library today contains more than 40 credits exploring everything from LCA of building assemblies to medical process equipment and efficiency. Pilot credits create dialogue among LEED users and interested stakeholders about how to effectively deal with the challenging interdependencies and complexities that future evolution of LEED faces. Two recent additions to the Pilot Library encourage project teams to explore new credit ideas dealing with Demand Response in buildings and the use of Certified Products.
“Pilot credits are multi-stakeholder market tests: We expect dramatic changes to credit content to occur during the pilot test periods,” said Owens. “Feedback from projects actively engaged in the application of the concepts being tested by pilot credits coupled with active dialogue with other stakeholders fuels an interactive process that seeks to optimize credit structure and operation prior to making it an official part of the rating system.”
LEED project teams that find any of the proposed credits suitable to their projects are encouraged to participate in pilot testing. All participating project teams submit evaluation forms, providing input on the proposed credit’s strengths and weaknesses, engage in dialogue via the LEEDuser website and share their views on the future of each credit they pilot test. This feedback is reviewed by a Working Group of the LEED Steering Committee and shapes improvements to the content of the idea addressed in the pilot credit. Each project that participates in a credit’s pilot and submits feedback receives one Innovation & Design or Innovation in Operations point.
“We’ve also worked hard to make sure people understand that while project experience using the credit is invaluable, there are numerous appropriate ways to comment on a credit’s intent even if you aren’t actively using it,” Owens continued. “Through our partnership with LEEDuser we get feedback from our chapters, project teams, and other stakeholders; we get letters and email; we have our formal public comment periods as the rating system evolves. The green building movement collectively benefits from a robust dialogue around these issues and USGBC encourages you to engage with us on these issues and help us build a stronger LEED.”
Details on each pilot credit are available for download at the Pilot Credit Library.
Questions can be directed to pilot@usgbc.org.