Green Building and the LEED Process

On 16th September 2009, Blue Snow was invited to talk to the Faculty of Built Environment , University Malaya. The invitation was part of the Green Talks organized by Putrajaya Perdana Berhad, a listed company which is known for constructing energy-efficient buildings. Speaker, Ir.Bernard Sagaiyaraj walked through the audience, comprising mainly of 2nd and 3rd year students as to the definitions of Sustainable Design and Green Building. He pointed out that since buildings contribute to 40% of greenhouse gases (GHG), then Architects and Engineers in this field have a duty to ensure that buildings are conceptualized and built to reduce GHG and the premier global standard and tool to use today was the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. He also emphasized the importance of an integrated design team approach or Green Team to ensure that the building project successfully implements LEED both at the Design stage and the Construction stage. As LEED utilizes many internationally accepted standards like ASHRAE , it can can be used world-wide and on any weather conditions. For e.g. Malaysia falls under the weather code of Zone 1A in ASHRAE Standard 90.1. He went on further to explain about the key LEED Components that are Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy & Atmosphere, Material Resources, Indoor Environment Quality and Innovation in Design and how points are achieved in each area to attain LEED Certified , Silver , Gold or Platinum status.