Jan 2012 Event Recap

“The Costs of LEED – Real World Case Studies” Presented by Rob Hink, LEED AP, CEO and Principal of The Spinnaker Group

It was a night of firsts!  This was the TC Branch’s first meeting of 2012.  And we were the first organization to hold a meeting in the brand new LEED Certified Brown Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship on the main campus of Indian River State College. (Register now for November tour of the Brown Center.)

Prior to the evening’s featured program, those in attendance were given a tour of the three-story Brown Center by Jan Pagano, Dean of IRSC’s Entrepreneurship & Economic Development Division.  

The Center opened its doors to students and faculty on January 5, and it will offer a broad range of programs, including renewable energy studies, net zero building construction, and the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) and the Corporate & Community Training Institute (CCTI).  

Program Feature – Rob Hink, CEO and Principal of The Spinnaker Group (Weston, FL), presented a lively review of specific LEED project examples in the South Florida market.  The presentation was titled “LEED Costs and Returns – OR – How to Get a Lot of Green (LEED) for a Little Green ($$$)!”  Based on his examination of more than 100 LEED projects undertaken over 5 years, he had to admit “. . . it depends on the project.”

Although many people tend to think that “going LEED” adds significant costs to a project, Rob presented three Florida projects that debunked that myth.  The examples included St. Andrews School (LEED Gold, Palm Beach County), the Animal Care Complex at Palm Beach Zoo (the first LEED certified zoo animal hospital in the United States), and Republic Services (LEED Silver, Sunrise).  In each of these specific cases, as well as others, the costs generally associated with a LEED project – the USGBC registration fee, LEED consulting fees, building commissioning fees, and energy modeling fees – did not individually exceed 1% of the total project cost, and often were less than 0.5% each.  These upfront costs were more than matched with energy and resource savings to the owners and occupants after the projects were completed.

In fact, the cost to build a LEED Certified project today is fairly equal to a traditionally-built project.  The advantage of building a LEED project is that it yields far greater savings from resource conservation, energy usage, occupant health and productivity, and long-term marketability of the building.  Finally, the best indicator of a project’s long-term viability and profitability is having achieved a third-party LEED certification!

We want to thank Rob Hink for enthusiastically sharing his experiences as a seasoned LEED practitioner – the audience thoroughly enjoyed it!  We also thank Jan Pagano for her tour of IRSC’s Brown Center, and we extend our thanks to Bob O’Brien of IRSC’s Corporate & Community Training Institute for setting up the meeting room.