City Green Building
Design Tools & Strategies

Sustainable building design, construction and operation entails a departure from traditional processes, an integrated approach involving all affected parties at the earliest possible stage. To facilitate the use of LEED™ by City of Seattle project managers and their design teams, the City and consultants have developed a series of tools.

LEED Tools for Public Projects:

  • Project Manager Task List:  Achieving LEED certification on a project requires a new approach to project development. This task list identifies critical action items to facilitate certification.
  • Implement Design Tool: This sustainable building tool, developed by the City of Seattle, is a practical how-to-tool that assists in implementing sustainable building policy.
  • Sample Language for LEED Projects: Clear communication of client expectations through specific language is central to a successful LEED (or any) green building project. This resource contains project services procurement language from a series of City LEED projects to serve as examples for other projects.
  • Energy Baseline for Seattle Projects:  Designed to assist City project managers with LEED Rating System energy prerequisites and credits that reference ASHRAE/IESNA 90.1. This side-by-side comparison of 90.1 standards with corresponding Seattle Energy Code is invaluable in establishing equivalency determinations for Seattle LEED™ projects, whether City-owned or private sector developments.
  • Sustainable Sites Prerequisite:  Comparison of Seattle Code and Referenced Standard:  The LEED Sustainable Sites Prerequisite 1: "Erosion and Sedimentation Control" calls for projects to design to an erosion and sedimentation control plan that meets a referenced EPA standard or local standards, whichever is more stringent. To help Seattle projects document compliance with this credit, representatives of SPU and DPD conducted a comparison of the EPA referenced standard and Seattle Code, including an analysis of stringency.
  • International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP) Resources: LEED references this protocol as the standard for measurement and verification in Energy and Atmosphere Credit 5. In order to introduce project managers and teams to the IPMVP, DPD created two summary sheets:
  • King County LEED Supplements - A useful tool to cross-reference LEED with local codes and resources. The City of Seattle is in the process of developing a similar tool for Seattle projects. NOTE:  Please be aware that codes and resources for City of Seattle projects may be different than those listed in the King County tool.

Green Building for Neighborhood Fire Station Projects:

Last Updated: August 13, 2007