A Quantitative Assessment of a LEED Certified Campus Building

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Date

2009-06

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The Ohio State University

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Abstract

In today’s society, sustainability is a key word in the building design and construction industry. But how does one measure the sustainability of a building? The LEED program offers a rating system based on certain criteria, but how would one compare alternate buildings and certain design decisions? To answer these questions several tools and programs have been developed to evaluate the environmental impacts of the material and assemblies from the time they are extracted as minerals, manufactured, constructed, replaced and demolished with the building. This process is known as a life cycle analysis. This study intends to develop a method to analyze a LEED Certified building using commercially available life cycle analysis software. Another aspect of this study was to research how the building selected for the analysis completed the requirements for LEED certification. The building used for this study was the LEED Certified Ohio 4-H Center on the campus of the Ohio State University. The program used for the analysis was the Athena: Impact Estimator which using life cycle analysis of building assemblies to determine the energy and resource use at each stage of the life cycle. The results of this study found that this method of analysis can be used to predict the life cycle consumption of a pre-constructed building based on the building plans and energy consumption over one year. It was also found that this tool would be better utilized as a design tool early in the conceptual or pre-planning stages for comparing similar designs due to the restrictions on the inputs that are available for current versions of the program. This study also summarized the design and construction details implemented in order for the 4-H Center to be LEED Certified.

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Sustainability, Sustainable Structural Design

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