Irvine Company: LEED Volume Certification

How Cadmus helped a California real estate owner become the state’s largest owner of LEED-certified properties

The Irvine Company, a major real estate and land owner in Southern California, is one of America’s most respected private real estate companies. Irvine Company Office Properties (ICOP) owns and operates more than 50 Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design^® (LEED)-certified properties spanning nearly 15 million square feet of efficient, high performance workspace in Orange, San Diego, and Los Angeles counties as well as Silicon Valley.

Challenge

With several LEED-certified office properties in its extensive portfolio, ICOP wanted to expand that number significantly in order to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability and raise the bar in the industry. Cadmus was contracted by ICOP to deliver LEED Volume facilitation and certification services for 44 high-rise office buildings in its portfolio—the largest single volume-certification application ever submitted at that time.

Solution

To overcome the challenge of certifying 43 buildings simultaneously under the LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Management (LEED EB O&M) classification, Cadmus first helped ICOP develop prototypes and a framework for operational upgrades for some of the buildings. Once the upgrades had been implemented, Cadmus worked with ICOP building operations staff to perform on-site evaluation work and collected documentation and data in its proprietary online eVOL™ tool, a comprehensive portfolio certification management resource that Cadmus makes available to all of its portfolio clients.

A project of this scope comes with unique challenges beyond those ordinarily associated with a one-off or single building certification. Because each set of ICOP’s buildings had different management and engineering team members, consistent education across the team on the program’s goals and execution depended upon forming a true partnership with ICOP.

Results

The project took approximately 1.5 years from planning through certification and resulted in simultaneous LEED certification for all 43 buildings at their targeted levels of certification:

• 28 buildings achieved LEED Gold.
• 10 buildings achieved LEED Silver.
• 6 buildings were LEED certified.

A total of 12 million square feet of LEED-certified space was added to the client’s portfolio. Though ICOP’s buildings had been predominantly operating at a high level prior to the LEED certification process, through the evaluation process the client was able to further improve their operations and document significant energy savings through adjustment of schedules and operational improvements.

Learn more about Cadmus’ High Performance Buildings & Plants services.