LEED Consulting: How Much Does It Cost?
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A universal question when assessing LEED certification is documentation cost. That is to say, how much does it cost to hire a LEED consultant? Unfortunately, there’s not really a one size fits all answer.
LEED documentation costs are subject to a wide variety of variables such as the level of certification, which credits are being pursued and the complexity of building design and systems.  This makes it nearly impossible to quantify the cost based on a percentage of construction cost or a dollar amount by square footage.
Based on our experience, the best rule of thumb is to use a cost of $600 to $2000 per point, with the higher end for credits that require more documentation effort or calculations, and for larger or more complex buildings. The documentation cost is largely fixed with a slight variable cost component for those credits requiring advanced modeling and significant hours of analysis.
While this might not give an exact number to insert into a financial model this rule should at least give you an understanding of the rationale behind consulting costs.
Please share with the rest of us any formulas you use in your own practice.
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1 Comments
February 19th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Thank you for the post.
My comments are as follows :
If purely for documentation/calculations/submission to USGBC etc., then your rates @ USD 600 -2000 . But from our experience in Southeast Asia, most project teams do not have many Engineers who are yet capable of generating ideas for energy-saving or improving IAQ. So, we as LEED APs , have to ‘hand-hold’ the design & construction team into these practices.
Sometimes clients ask for total services ( other than the regular Mech and Elec consulting services.) i.e. LEED AP services + TAB ( Commissioning Agent ) + Building Modeling etc. And when we quote them for these entire services, they claim its too expensive to go Green !
Although specified in LEED, many building owners do NOT understand the value of TAB ( Testing, Adjusting and Balancing ). Many avoid it on purpose, especially the design engineers, who feel that TAB will show-up errors in their calculations OR construction firms , who try to not install as per design !
In summary , we generally work on a 0.4 to 0.6 % ( sliding scale) of total project cost because the client easily understands this method of fee pricing.
Any comments are welcome !