LEED Perception Disparities: Designers versus Non-Designers

With the increased interest in green buildings, the building industry has been experiencing a fastgrowing demand for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for the last decade. Still, it is not unusual to see various barriers and issues during its implementation, and experience tells that they can result in harming the overall project performance with reworks, lower productivity, schedule delays, and cost overruns. In order to better understand the industry’s observation on issues and their consequences during LEED implementation, we distributed an online survey, and a total of 53 responses were received. The survey results indicate that (1) both designers and non-designers (e.g., contractors) select ‘added costs to design and construction’ as the biggest barrier; (2) both designers and non-designers select ‘decision made too late in the design process’ as the most frequently observed issue; and (3) non-designers indicate higher perceived severity in every consequence criteria than designers. The statistical analyses reveal that cost overruns are the most severe impact observed and have a statistically significant relationship with responses in regard to the barrier to LEED implementation.