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The purpose of this study is to examine the feasibility of using 3D simulation transfer processes to streamline the environmental assessment of buildings that have been designed digitally using building information modelling (BIM). The case study presented relates to a competition (“Build Qatar Live”) in which one of the winning team’s objectives was to create a smart process for assessing the design against the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) criteria. The experience indicated that a rapid, concurrent and efficient LEED evaluation was possible within the BIM process. The study presents technological approaches that can be adopted within the BIM environment to simplify the environmental assessments and embrace practices that reduce environmental and ecological impacts.

The methodology encompassed an overview of how rapid high-value data exchange occurs within BIM to achieve a sustainable building design as part of an international design competition. Achieving a LEED rating through sustainable design was a key requirement of the competition.

The findings of this case study has revealed that key credits in LEED can be integrated within the BIM design process. Therefore, tackling such important environmental design issues in parallel to building design and providing key information on building elements needed to meet the sustainability criteria.

This research highlights the benefits of streamlined, architectural and data software exchange through applying data interoperability of a building design; thus, skipping conventional 2D building and conventional documentation for environmental and energy designs simulations needed for LEED certifications and general low carbon design.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between environmental factors and building energy consumption of three Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified buildings at the Arizona State University, by establishing the relationships of the outside atmospheric temperature and the energy consumed in the building using real-time data generated from different sources.

K-means clustering analysis is used to calibrate and eliminate unwanted influences or factors from a set of building consumption real-time data. For further statistical analysis, the chi-square is used to verify if the results are ample to prove the findings.

Few studies have addressed building energy consumption real-time data versus LEED Energy and Atmosphere (EA) credits with the data mining technique (k-means clustering) on most of building performance analyses. This study highlighted that the calibrating energy data are a better approach to analyze energy use in buildings and that there is a relationship between LEED credits’ (EA) Optimize Energy Performance scores and building energy efficiency. However, the energy consumption data alone do not yield useful results to establish the cause and effect relationships.

Although there are several previous research studies regarding LEED building energy performance, this research study focused on the LEED building energy performance versus LEED EA credits versus environmental factors using real-time building energy data and various statistical methods (e.g. K-means clustering and chi-square). The findings provide researchers, engineers and architects with valuable references for building energy analysis methods and supplements in LEED standards.

Healthcare projects face multiple obstacles in achieving sustainability. This paper aims to provide information regarding the energy consumption of healthcare facilities, to identify barriers to sustainability and to suggest methods to improve the effectiveness of these buildings.

This study investigates sustainability in healthcare buildings by examining national databases about energy use and energy savings. The authors then initiate a dialogue on this topic by interviewing experts in healthcare planning and design regarding the implications of this data, challenges to sustainability and potential solutions to these challenges.

An analysis of data from the Energy Information Administration revealed that healthcare facilities rank second among building types in the USA in energy use per square foot and rank fourth in total energy use. Data from the US Green Building Council showed that only 1 per cent of healthcare buildings are registered with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system, and 0.4 per cent have achieved certification, which is low compared with other building types.

Research and discussion must continue engaging all stakeholders to interpret the data and identify transformative solutions to facilitate sustainable healthcare design construction and operation.

It is important to approach sustainability in healthcare from social, economic, environmental and health-related perspectives. The authors identify five major barriers to sustainable healthcare design and construction and discuss 12 practical solutions.

Given the energy demands of healthcare buildings, facilitating their sustainability has the potential to make a significant difference in national energy use. Empirical research and evidence-based design can potentially help to accelerate sustainability by clarifying impacts and documenting the economic and operational returns on investment.

Traditional management systems sometimes struggle to meet the unique demands of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) projects. Consequently, contractors have to modify their management practices. The purpose of this paper is to explore the management practices necessary to achieve successful implementation of LEED projects.

LEED project management practices implemented by six US contractors from the Top 100 Green Contractors list published by the Engineering News and Record, were analysed using structured case study interviews. An additional case study probed management practices implemented on a LEED‐GOLD project.

Findings support the implementation of management practices classified using the six Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria of leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, measurement, analysis and knowledge management, workforce focus and operation focus.

The qualitative study was based on a limited number of participant organizations. A subsequent quantitative study might provide generalizeable metrics for the green building industry. Further research on the cost effectiveness of the identified management practices is recommended.

This study provides an intuitive framework in the form of discourse on management practices to enhance the success of LEED projects. Contractors may consider the study's recommendations in order to increase their success on such projects.

The need to harmonize management practices with sustainable development has sparked the interest of researchers and practitioners. The study should be of utility to LEED contractors, environmental agencies, governments, educators, and other relevant stakeholders.

This study aims to develop a web-based tool – LEED Energy Performance Online Submission Tool (LEPOST) to reduce the submission cost of the leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED) application process and facilitate green building design. Lifecycle cost reduction is a major driver for designing green buildings. LEED rating system has been well recognised and widely used in the green building industry. However, certification cost incurred in time and money is often a deterrent for some projects.

LEPOST automatically maps EnergyPlus and eQUEST energy simulation results to the LEED energy performance requirement submission templates using an extensible markup language (XML) data structure. It incorporates the Energy Star Target Finder online engine and current utility data to calculate points required to assess LEED Energy and Atmosphere Prerequisite 2 and Credit 1 automatically.

A comparative case study is conducted using an office building project. The study results show that the tool can reduce the amount of time for the LEED energy performance evaluation and submission process from more than 6 hours to 2 minutes. The total number of manual data entries is reduced from 442 to 20.

Future work includes the update to support LEED V4, the development of a parametric design function that can help design teams perform design alternatives to evaluate energy performance with minimum effort, and the integration with the LEED Online system.

The use of the tool by the building industry may decrease the cost of LEED certification for building owners, developers and design teams by simplifying the submission process.

The overall development framework of LEPOST contributes to the knowledge of the data interoperability in the building sector by demonstrating a viable solution to extract and map digital model information for achieving code and standard compliance purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the characteristics of green building guidelines in developed countries and to analyze their influence on the evolution and adoption of similar guidelines in India.

This research reviews the green building guidelines in the developed as well as the developing countries such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design guidelines for new construction (LEED^® NC‐USA), Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM)‐UK, Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency (CASBEE)‐Japan, and LEED^®‐India and further performs a comparative analysis of these guidelines.

Based on the comparative analysis of LEED^® NC‐USA, BREEAM‐UK, and CASBEE‐Japan, the characteristics that might have affected their current acceptance were identified. The catalysts and hindrances associated with the acceptance of LEED‐India in India were identified based on the comparative analysis of LEED^® NC‐USA and LEED^®‐India.

With an exponential growth of construction industry in the rapidly developing countries, there is a definite need to promote the adoption of green building guidelines. The methodology adopted in this research can be applied to understand the evolution as well as future adoption of green building guidelines in other countries that are facing similar circumstances.

This paper aims to primarily analyzing the state and pattern of current energy benchmarking progress on commercial buildings since the New York City’s energy disclosure law, Local Law 84: Benchmarking has been implemented. It then compares the yearly benchmarking progress of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified and non-LEED-certified buildings as well as ENERGY STAR-certified and non-ENERGY STAR-certified.

For thorough analytics, the authors combined and examined four sources of data: New York City Local Law 84: Benchmarking, Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output, US Green Building Council and US Environmental Protection Agency. The data sets were combined using two primary keys: the Borough, Block, Lot (BBL) number and the building address. Four years of energy use intensity values were obtained and normalized by shrinking the range of deviance in weather.

The findings indicate a significant improvement in the benchmarking progress when controlling building size, building type, year of construction or the most recent renovation and the presence of renovation. Interestingly, there is no significant difference in the energy benchmarking progress between LEED- and non-LEED-certified buildings. Possible reasons are explored and discussed.

From a methodological perspective, the study benefited from data disclosure as well as open data sources and used secondary data with a relatively large sample size. Many studies in the construction industry are based on the case-study approach, which may affect generalizability and causality of research findings. This unique approach illustrates the potential of secondary data analysis in the industry.

The paper aims to introduce a reliable and valid green Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) servicescape measure (i.e. one that utilises extraordinary leadership in energy and environmental design supporting green building design, construction, and operations) that examines the direct effects of the physical environment on consumers' evaluation of a service encounter. In addition, the mediating effects of service quality perception, customer satisfaction, and consumers' attitude toward a service provider are considered.

The study is based on a sample of 522 Brazilian respondents' evaluation of their experience with the green LEED servicescape. A comprehensive research model and its moderating effects are investigated using LISREL model. The LISREL model consists of two parts: the measurement model and the structural equation model. The measurement model specifies how latent variables or hypothetical constructs depend upon or are indicated by observed variables. It describes the measurement properties (reliabilities and validities) of the observed variables. The structural equation model specifies the causal relationships among the latent variables, describes the causal effects, and assigns the explained and unexplained variance. The LISREL method estimates the unknown coefficients of a set of linear structural equations. It is particularly designed to accommodate models that include latent variables, measurement errors, namely reciprocal causation, simultaneity, and interdependence in both dependent and independent variables.

Overall, the study provided significant support (p≤0.05) for seven of eight hypotheses with the eighth marginally supported by the data. Specifically, the results suggest that consumers' perceptions of the green servicescape have a direct effect on their service quality perceptions and on their overall satisfaction with the environment. Findings also suggest that a consumer's perception of service quality has a direct effect on their level of satisfaction with the service environment, and satisfaction along with service quality has a direct effect on a consumer's attitude‐towards‐a green service provider. The consumers' attitude‐towards‐a green service provider influences their purchase intentions.

A reliable and valid green LEED servicescape measurement scale is introduced to the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to create and present a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design New Construction (LEED NC) building performance assessment model that will identify and prioritize external parameters affecting a LEED-certified building’s operational performance.

The uncertainty associated with external parameters affecting a LEED-certified building’s operational performance is examined through the use of analytic network process (ANP). An ANP model is created based on the extensive literature research and experiences of professionals in the green building industry. Eight case studies are analyzed, and data collected through interviews with experts are utilized in prioritizing external parameters affecting buildings’ operational performance.

The findings show that the most important external parameters affecting a LEED-certified building’s operational performance are lack of enhanced commissioning, lack of life cycle assessment/life cycle costing analysis, lack of energy modeling, and lack of knowledge in green technology. The results demonstrate that both asset value and profit, as well as the economic life of the facility, are mostly affected by the energy efficiency of the building, and consequently LEED NC energy and atmosphere category.

This research contributes to the body of knowledge on green architecture by defining and prioritizing external parameters and their relationships to operational building performance in LEED NC projects. The proposed model can be used by construction managers and facility managers to operate LEED-certified buildings better and reduce environmental impacts throughout the functional life cycle of the building.