The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system was developed by the US Green Building Council (USGBC) in 1998 to provide third-party verification that a building project has reached LEED Certification. There are four levels of certification (Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum) that a building project can achieve by being awarded point-based credits within the rating system.
LEED has evolved and grown over the years. The current version is LEED version 4 which focuses on different building and renovation types. The LEED Building Design and Construction (BD+C) reference guide focuses on eight building types and can be viewed here.
There are several ways that metal cladding products such as solid 3mm aluminum and aluminum composite materials can be used to earn credits towards the “Building Product Disclosure and Optimization – Sourcing of Raw Materials” LEED rating system category for a building. Here is an example of the credits possible for new constructions:
To find out what credits a product has, ask the manufacturer for their LEED Data Sheet. You will then receive something that looks like this:
The products are services provided by manufacturers like Fairview and do not earn project points themselves. Our role is instead to educate our team and our customers on how our products can contribute to a building’s overall LEED rating. We also become involved in the process when supplying LEED product compliance is required.
An example of this is the SYLPOE – San Ysidro Land of Port of Entry. This project is the first LEED Platinum land port of entry out of more than 20 LEED-registered border crossings in the US. This project features 168,297sf of our 3mm solid aluminum Vitraplate panels. More information on this project here.
You can download our LEED Data Sheet from our Digital Document Binder. Alternatively, for more information on LEED in general and Fairview’s metal cladding products, please contact our team today at helpdesk@farview-na.com or use our online form.
