Ryerson Study: LEED EB O&M and BOMA BESt
March 22, 2011
Executive Summary
LEED Canada for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance (LEED Canada EB:O&M) and Building Owners and Managers Association’s Building Environmental Standards (BOMA BESt) are complex green rating systems that offer owners, managers, consultants and tenants distinct value propositions for existing buildings. Upon close examination, significant variations between the systems are evident in certification process, cost, rigour, engagement, marketing, accessibility, transparency, management and program philosophy. Despite the many differences between the systems, they are often seen to be complementary programs and are sometimes used in tandem for the same building. The purpose of this research is to survey the effectiveness of LEED Canada EB:O&M and BOMA BESt in relation to the above criteria.
The underlying philosophies guiding the LEED Canada EB:O&M and BOMA BESt programs are noteworthy as they share the aim of transforming the built environment. The mission of the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC), which administers the LEED Canada EB:O&M system in Canada, is to “lead and accelerate the transformation to high-performing, healthy green buildings, homes and communities throughout Canada”. This articulates the approach of taking a leadership position in ensuring superior performance. In contrast, the Building Owners Managers Association’s (BOMA) mission for the BOMA BESt program is “Transforming buildings into environmentally responsible assets”, suggesting a flexible means of achieving environmental accountability.
The BOMA BESt approach focuses on engaging building management staff and operators, providing a framework for self-study, improvement and promoting choices that best suit the building’s needs. Conversely, the CaGBC’s intention of driving market transformation is evident in the LEED program’s exhaustive framework and documentation requirements ensuring that the building performs at its highest potential.
The way BOMA approaches their objective is to provide an inclusive program, open to all interested participants. Entry into the program is designed to accommodate buildings of all performance levels, espousing the philosophy that the path to environmental improvement should be an accessible process, regardless of initial operational characteristics. The LEED Canada EB:O&M program’s approach to sustainability is to set significant entrance requirements, ensuring that successful participants are within the top quartile of performers, creating a distinctive class of building that the rest of the industry may seek to emulate.
As a result of the fundamentally different nature of the programs, preferences for LEED Canada EB:O&M and BOMA BESt are determined by the stakeholder values and the programs are used for a variety of reasons. In the absence of long-term statistical data that would permit a quantitative assessment, industry perception of the two programs was gathered from a cross-section of commercial building stakeholders including tenants, owners, managers, consultants and partner organizations. An initial survey was distributed asking respondents to rate key criteria from 1 to 5. Follow up interviews were conducted to ascertain the reasons for various responses. For the purposes of confidentiality, no names or companies are identified in this study.
Figure 1 shows averaged ratings of key characteristics relating to BOMA BESt and LEED Canada EB:O&M. Stakeholders rated both programs according to the following criteria from 1 to 5:
• Certification process simplicity
• Cost
• Accessibility
• Ongoing improvement potential
• Strength as a management tool
• Strength as a marketing tool
• Strength in providing social benefit
• Effectiveness in assessing real environmental benefits
• Ability to reduce measurable resource use
Click image for a larger view:
At a more granular level, there is disparity about the strengths of the two green rating systems, but average results across the survey criteria suggest an inversely proportional relationship between user-friendliness and performance. BOMA BESt is rated as having a simpler certification process than LEED, but has a lower level of ingrained performance in measurable resource use and environmental benefit. Similarly, LEED’s systemic rigour tends to yield higher performance levels, at the expense of simplicity, cost and accessibility.
Survey results and subsequent interviews exposed a wide variety of opinions regarding the relative strengths of BOMA BESt and LEED EBO&M in the areas such as the programs’ strengths as management tools and their marketing values. Although LEED Canada EB:O&M’s systemically thorough process shows stronger numbers than BOMA BESt for criteria such as embedded ongoing improvement, management, social benefit, environmental benefit and measurable resource use, the range of opinions across stakeholders groups regarding the surveyed criteria show that the programs’ strengths are highly dependent on participant engagement.
Neither of the programs scored very highly in any of the categories suggesting that industry feels that both programs could improve in a variety of ways. In figure 1, the average responses range from 1.5 to 3.5 out of five (30% to 70%) for all categories, indicating that the characteristics being assessed were not perceived to be strong for either program. Caution must be taken when interpreting averaged data as many stakeholders have opinions that are not represented in aggregate form.
Overall, real social and environmental benefits are most effectively obtained through high engagement levels. BOMA BESt and LEED Canada EB:O&M provide frameworks for broad environmental improvement, but cannot account for how well the programs’ features are put to use. Respondents tend to believe that LEED Canada EB:O&M’s rigourous approach yields higher levels of social and environmental benefits, but only marginally. BOMA BESt can effectively identify areas of improvement but is unable to differentiate between thoroughness of implementation. An example of this can be found with lighting controls, where BOMA BESt prompts the user to indicate if there are automatic lighting controls with a yes or no checkmark box; this technology can be applied to a single room or an entire building without consequence to the BOMA BESt score. LEED Canada EB:O&M’s Controllability of Systems: Lighting demands that at least 50% of the occupants have controllable lighting suitable for the task at hand.
BOMA BESt has the marketing advantage of promoting its program amongst its membership. As a trusted association to owners and managers, it is able to create interest and adoption amongst its 2500+ members. However, BOMA is less well known outside its membership and has been less successful in creating a brand recognizable to prospective tenants. The LEED brand is widely seen to be an indicator of high performance and environmental responsibility, which attracts interest from various stakeholders. Surveys and interviews uncovered that tenant groups were the least convinced about the benefits of LEED Canada EB:O&M over BOMA BESt from a marketing point of view.
BOMA BESt has been available in Canada since 2005. The flexible framework allows for a wide range of outcomes. With encouragement and support from senior-level management, available capital resources and knowledgeable operations staff, the BOMA BESt program can lead to significant improvements in the environmental performance of a building. Conversely, industry perception suggests that at lower levels of engagement, BOMA BESt can also be used by building owners, managers and operators who are seeking the marketing value of building certification, without necessarily a commitment to real environmental improvement. For example, The BOMA BESt program does not identify acceptable product specifications for some categories, which can result in program participants procuring materials that claim low environmental impacts without any evidence.
BOMA BESt is often misunderstood to be an entry-level program in the consultant community. The program’s holistic and high-performance levels are frequently misunderstood to indicate lower performance levels than they are in reality. It is important to distinguish between the initial level of BOMA BESt which is based on adopting best practices, and higher levels, that in some areas, require verification of improved performance. Used effectively, buildings with BOMA BESt certification may reach levels equivalent to the LEED Canada EB:O&M program. It is the opinion of some stakeholders that have experience with both programs, that BOMA BESt level 3 is similar to LEED Canada EB:O&M Gold.
LEED Canada EB:O&M, having only been launched in 2009, has been received well by industry chiefly due to market familiarity of the LEED NC program. However, some owners, consultants and managers are wary of the industry’s continued support for the EB:O&M program because of its high costs. Ongoing costs associated to maintaining the program’s ISO-like management practices can negate the operational savings admitted a senior vice-president of a property management firm. Difficulties in developing reliable business cases, has caused the industry to currently use LEED Canada EB:O&M for only their flagship buildings. The CaGBC is confident that the benefits to industry are well worth the strict measures imposed by the program, particularly in view of the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts of the existing building stock.
Addressing the question of which program delivers a ‘greener’ building is difficult to answer directly because the environmental improvement of buildings is dependent on building stakeholder initial and ongoing engagement levels. The LEED Canada EB:O&M program enforces a high level of rigour into the daily routines of the building’s staff, with specific documentation requirements that promote accountability. Recognizing that LEED’s prerequisite performance levels are significant, and a large part of building performance is related to occupant behaviour, LEED Canada EB:O&M’s systemic rigour instills a higher level of operational behaviour and performance than BOMA BESt certification. It should be recognized however, that although the entry level to BOMA BESt may not be evaluated on the basis of performance, higher certification levels are indicators of very well performing buildings.
However, the BOMA BESt program focuses more on participation in a process of ongoing improvement starting from a building’s current performance level without prerequisite performance conditions. The influence on the sustainability of the Canadian building stock is thought to be significant as administrative costs are conservative and the program encourages participation by those who may not be able to invest heavily in capital upgrades and consulting fees, but who are still interested in improving their buildings.
The objectives laid out by BOMA and CaGBC are important, but unfortunately their success is difficult to measure. Judging whether a building has become a “responsible asset” or a “high performing and healthy” is problematic with currently available assessment methods. Both programs have been relatively recently implemented, and more time and larger scoped research will be needed before conclusive determinations can be made about their effectiveness at creating ‘green’ buildings.
Although the LEED Canada EB:O&M program attempts to lead industry toward significant environmental transformation, there are concerns about slackened practices in the 5 years interval between re-certifications and the total costs of certification have created a hesitant market, with many organizations unwilling to certify all but their flagship buildings under the program.
The BOMA BESt program has had some success in creating a peer-driven culture for the improvement of existing buildings while providing comprehensive national and regional benchmarking data on an annual basis. Stakeholders are able to identify the relative performance of their buildings, informing improvement initiatives and driving a continuous improvement cycle.
BOMA BESt and LEED Canada EB:O&M approaches to improving the environmental performance of the built environment differ in many ways. The task of improving existing buildings is monumental, requiring commitment, engagement, investment, and monitoring. Both programs can be used as frameworks for achieving environmental improvements, but ultimately depend on the users’ dedication the cause of sustainability.
Conclusions and Observations:
• BOMA BESt is an inclusive program ranging from best practices documentation to very high performance
• LEED Canada EB:O&M is an exclusive program aiming to create a culture of upper tier performance
• Although industry perceives the programs to have differing strengths, neither program scored above 70% in any of the categories identifying an opportunity for improvement
• The LEED Canada EB:O&M program is seen to achieve higher social and environmental benefits, but only marginally
• BOMA BESt is often misunderstood to be an entry-level program in the consultant community. The program’s holistic and high-performance levels are frequently misunderstood to indicate lower performance levels than they are in reality
• BOMA BESt is able to identify areas of improvement but is unable to differentiate between thoroughness of implementation
• LEED’s systemic rigour tends to yield higher performance levels, at the expense of simplicity, cost and accessibility
• LEED Canada EB:O&M’s systemic rigour tends to instill a higher level of operational behaviour and performance than BOMA BESt certification
• Average results across the survey criteria suggest an inversely proportional relationship between user-friendliness and performance
• With encouragement and support from senior-level management, available capital resources and knowledgeable operations staff, the BOMA BESt program can lead to significant improvements in the environmental performance of a building.
• Used effectively, buildings with BOMA BESt certification may reach levels equivalent to the LEED Canada EB:O&M program
• However, some owners, consultants and managers are wary of the industry’s continued support for the EB:O&M program because of its high costs.
• Difficulties in developing reliable business cases, has caused the industry to currently use LEED Canada EB:O&M for only their flagship buildings
• there are concerns about slackened practices in the 5 years intervals between re-certifications and the total costs of certification have created a hesitant market, with many organizations unwilling to certify all but their flagship buildings under the program
• The BOMA BESt program has had some success in creating a peer-driven culture for the improvement of existing buildings while providing comprehensive national and regional benchmarking data on an annual basis
• Although tenant groups are beginning to seek green certified buildings, a strong preference for BOMA BESt or LEED Canada EB:O&M is not evident
Read the full report www.arch.ryerson.ca/files/Ryerson_BB&LEED_EBOM_Study.pdf
Richard Roos, MASc candidate in building science at Ryerson University
Dr Mark Gorgolewski, Professor & Director of the graduate program in building science at Ryerson University
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