The Details

I am not one to get excited about sitting in a room all day to begrudgingly meet the CEH requirements for my professional status. When opportunities are presented to do so I am very skeptical and hesitant to commit. I would much rather be in the office being productive, or in the dentist chair, or maybe having elective surgery. However, I was intrigued by the advertisement that I received from a guy named Richard Andros and his company, Andron Continuing Education. The email claimed that attending his one day seminar could prepare you to pass the LEED exam in one attempt and it also offered 8 hours of credit. It was held here in Atlanta and was pretty convenient. So, I signed up. I thought at least I could find a good place to eat lunch in Buckhead and the day might not be a total waste.

Now if there is one thing I am more skeptical of than seminars it would be the whole LEED influence on the world of Architecture and Construction. It seems like government regulated common sense to me but that is fodder for a whole other article. However, it is always important to keep up with the influences that affect our world and our livelihood. So with all of my pre-conceptions and hesitancies I went to Dick's meeting. I was very pleasantly surprised.

Mr. Andron has a clearly real world view of the value of the LEED system as well as the challenges of its inherent processes. He has taken the current encyclopedic volumes of available study material and filtered it very finely through his in-depth experience as a LEED professional. The result is a concise (yes in this case concise is 7 or 8 hours) and informative discussion of the LEED system as it is defined today and how to understand what is directly relative to becoming a certified professional. His real world examples are helpful in understanding the intent of the LEED standards and calculations and his clarification of how to proceed through the system's intricacies are calming. We discussed the actual certification process for an individual from GA to AP BD+C and beyond. We discussed the classifications of New Construction, Core and Shell and Schools and other rating systems. We also learned the difference between them and how the basic LEED standards apply to each.

At the end of the day my interest in pursuing LEED certification was actually peeked and some of my initial reluctances were diffused. I am not saying that I am a sold out believer in the LEED system now or that I think it has a value to every architectural endeavor. I am saying that I do not feel any fear of being left behind or unable to talk intelligently about this obviously powerful influence on the built world. That is worth the time and the investment all by itself. If you are interested in pursuing LEED certification for yourself I highly recommend Dick's seminar. Heck, the study material and sample test questions are worth the fee in and of themselves. Check out his schedule at www.aceleed.com.