Several sustainable buildings (existing or new construction) that seek LEED credentials tend to not have a proactive plan at a very early stage of the project. stakeholders and decision-makers typically wait until the design phase begins to start discussing LEED’s categories (i.e. credit points allocations), which drains out the budget with a limited number of various background parties (subject matter experts) involved. This conventional method has a higher probability of killing production and collaboration and also limits creativity and innovation. Therefore, this research intended to evaluate the early preparation of the Technology Building at CSU-Pueblo as a case study and practical application to seek a LEED certification. Among all the LEED rating system categories (Seven categories), this paper studied closely those categories that have a significant effect on the building in terms of sustainability and cost-effective and identified measurably sustainable solutions.
A collaborative iterative process approach was utilized by researching and evaluating ideas, and conducting interviews with stakeholders and decision-makers to identify the most useful materials, items, and ideas and weight them against their pay-back periods. The purpose of this research was to integrate the iterative process approach into a high level of integrative process evaluation at an early stage of the project (Feasibility and Programming stage). The aim was to concentrate on the LEED categories that will contribute more to the project in terms of earning extra credit points without draining the project’s budget at a very early stage of the project.