Indian Construction Evnironment vs LEED

LEED Green Building– the myth or the miracle

 Green Building requirements in India:

Indian Industries are very conscious to save precious energy and water and want to improve the overall productivity. Residential township and Commercial go for LEED for marketing, business and ultimately profit, which is the sole aim for any Organization or Industries. By doing any way, we are saving precious energy and try to reduce the carbon emission with the ultimate aim to save our beautiful earth.   

Indian Builders requirements:

The requirements for any builder in India from the design team:

1. How to make Energy Efficient Building?
2. How to ensure the customer or tenant satisfaction?
3. How to control the overall project cost?
4. How to conduct audit over the Architect and MEP work?
5. How to utilize the best coordination and team work between the entire design team?
6. How to lower the investment risk?
7. How to fulfill the basic building norm by the central / state Government?
8. How to get good amount of the fund / market share?

Today building construction start before the Architect drawing freezes. Even Architect drawing and building construction proceed parallelly.  We have seen at the no. of projects in which for the name of Green Building various equipments and technologies, millions of money is putted or dumped.  Recent technologies are good but how to check current technology with one own building at that whether condition, occupancy, working schedule etc.? How to ensure all these? – Energy Modeling & Simulation is an important tool to prove whether current technologies are in the line with the coming building. Area impacting energy consumption in the design stage are: wall materials, roof materials, window wall ratio, sky lighting, shading, overhangs, no. of people, area of air conditioning, weather, heating temperature, cooling temperature, outside air, infiltration, partition, ceiling, utilities varieties, utilities charges (Demand charges, energy charges, time of day, miscellaneous energy, billing schedule), Lighting Power Density(LPD), lighting controls (occupancy sensor, oculux sensor, modulating controls), HVAC (Package Units, Variable Air Volume, system controls, air economizer, heat recovery, evaporative pre-cooler), central plant (air cooled, water cooled, water cooled chiller, reciprocating chiller, crew, scroll chiller, vapour absorption chiller). Could it possible to monitor all these parameter manually? Manually it is not possible. Energy Modeling and Simulation is an important software tool which monitors all these parameters and can perform N numbers of iteration.

Refers to the Indian Construction World requirements, LEED Green Building have the following solution:

1. LEED – Building rating system, best tool for evaluating building efficiency
2. Energy Modeling & Simulation is the best tool to evaluate overall energy cost of the building per annum. (Energy Modeling is mandatory for any Green Building which benchmark the energy consumption for any building)
3. Commissioning – check the rating system manually after one year of the occupancy (Commissioning is mandatory for any Green Building and called the post mortem for live operative building)
4. Measurement & Verification (M&V) – separate metering system for lighting, HVAC, equipment load, hot water system. M&V report need to be match with the energy modeling and simulation report.
5. Green Building is an important tool to audit over the entire project cost as per LEED Standard. We have seen in numbers of project, a small variation in the water or energy equipments can save millions of money.
6. Glass selection and natural day lighting. According to LEED Standard, 75% of the regular occupied area should have 250 lux level at the equinox day. Daylighting Modeling & Simulation is an important tool to measure the lux level and give number of iteration w.r.t. different glass and glazing areas. Building design with proper selection of glass, shade, window wall ratio at the design stage itself save 10-20% of energy.
7. Malls, hospital, retailer, offices, hotels – exterior and interior lighting plays a very crucial role in saving enormous amount of energy. LEED cover an important chapter for both interior and exterior lighting design. With the help of lighting simulation, upto 50-80% of the artificial lighting could be saved.
8. Construction World design team coordination - we have seen in the numbers of project design team work and contractor evaluations are not inline and after finishing the job, the mistake raised.

By, Satish Kumar