Sustainable (Green) Building: Project Design

Guidelines, Rating Systems, and Specifications

Green building performance standards offer a way to clearly state project goals and help us evaluate building performance. They can be found in a variety of documents including guidelines, rating systems, specifications, contracts, and State initiatives.

Guidelines

Sustainable Building Guidelines—a table of guidelines from throughout the United States.

Rating Systems and Best Practices

LEED^TM—a green building rating system for commercial buildings based on energy and environmental performance standards.

LEED^TM Supplement for California State Facilities (MS Word, 409 KB)—combines California-specific information and requirements, such as Title 24 energy efficiency standards, into a self-certification rating system based on LEED™ Version 2.0.

CHPS Best Practices Manual—a manual including three volumes. Volumes I and II are planning and design guidelines and Volume III, "Criteria," is a self-certification rating system for high performance schools.

Building and Buying Green In Indian Country - Information targeting construction in Indian Country.

Specifications

Green Project Specifications—explains the basics of project specifications and identifies areas to include environmental specifications into a building project. Links to example specifications are also provided.

Reference Specifications for Energy and Resource Efficiency—a set of specifications for commercial buildings that allows users to select from and insert language into their construction documents. The specifications cover components, systems, and controls with a strong emphasis on performance monitoring and commissioning of those systems; and building materials issues such as embodied energy, indoor air quality, recycled content, recyclability, and visible light reflectance.

Last updated: April 17, 2010