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Our design team includes LEED Accredited Professional

Looking for ways to reduce operating costs on your next building project? A LEED Accredited Professional may be the answer. Explore the benefits of green building design and see how White Hutchinson can help with your next green building project.

With rising energy prices, green building design is looking more and more attractive as a sound financial investment every day. Green buildings result in considerable savings in energy costs for heating, air conditioning and lighting and use less water.
In addition to lowering a building's operating cost, green buildings can make a significant contribution to improving the earth's health. In the U.S., buildings currently:

1. Use 12% of all water
2. Generate 39% of all CO2 emissions
3. Create 65% of all waste
4. Consume 71% of all electricity

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, has become the standard by which buildings are certified as green. Since its inception in 1998, LEED has grown to encompass more than 14,000 projects in 30 countries and every state in the U.S.

In order to obtain a LEED certification, one member of the design team must be a LEED Accredited Professional (AP). LEED Accredited Professionals must pass a test to demonstrate their knowledge of the LEED standards and accreditation process. LEED APs are responsible for leading the building design team through the integrated design process needed to design a sustainable building and handling all the documentation and submissions required for LEED construction accreditation.

Our White Hutchinson design team now has a LEED Accredited Professional architect, Curt Krambeck, LEED AP, so we are able to design LEED Certified green FECs and other type entertainment, edutainment and eatertainment buildings and renovations for our clients.

We have been incorporating green energy savings in our designs for a number of years, including daylight harvesting, energy management systems and rainwater harvesting. We can now offer our clients the ability to be one of the first in the family entertainment center (FEC) industry to have a LEED Certified facility.

Different versions of the LEED rating system are available for different type projects including new construction and interior build outs. The scoring systems for different LEED versions vary, but all are based on a set of required "prerequisites" and a variety of "credits" in six major categories:

• Sustainable sites
• Water efficiency
• Energy and atmosphere
• Materials and resources
• Indoor environmental quality
• Innovation and design process

In LEED v2.2 for new construction and major renovations of commercial buildings, there are 69 possible points and buildings can qualify for four levels of certification:

• Certified - 26-32 points
• Silver - 33-38 points
• Gold - 39-51 points
• Platinum - 52-69 points

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