by Brianna Crandall — November 28, 2016 — The Green Building Initiative (GBI) just announced that the U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) decision to recognize GBI’s Green Globes certification as an allowable certification program for use in the GSA’s federal leasing activities. This decision comes after the GSA’s Office of Leasing completed a months-long review and update of its leasing documents.
The revised documents were finalized October 12, and recently made available on GSA’s Web site. The revisions to GSA’s Request for Lease Proposals (RLP) and Lease templates now recognize Green Globes for New Construction (Green Globes NC) as an option for new construction leased spaces where green building certification is required for any building over 10,000 square feet, as well as Green Globes for Sustainable Interiors (Green Globes SI), which can be used as an option for tenant improvements.
Vicki Worden, executive director of GBI, stated:
The reputation of Green Globes as a credible, practical, and comprehensive third-party certification program is growing, and we are excited to earn GSA’s backing. The majority of federal agencies use leased space. Allowing the use of Green Globes provides the market with another option to make the footprint of green building-certified space even bigger.
The GSA Office of Leasing is a growing segment of the GSA’s work within the federal footprint. Over the past decade, the GSA’s percentage of owned versus leased federal office space has shifted, with the Office of Leasing now overseeing about 51 percent of its total federal government portfolio.
To date, GBI has certified 592 federal buildings through Green Globes and/or its Guiding Principles Compliance program, which is a third-party assessment program specifically tailored for federal agencies. Agencies that have leveraged GBI’s programs for their certification efforts include: GSA, the Department of Energy, the Department of Veterans Affairs, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of State, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Farm Service Administration.
The new federal leasing guidelines by GSA are effective immediately, and apply to all GSA real property leasing activities and to activities delegated by GSA to other federal agencies.
For more information on GBI’s programs and services, visit the GBI Web site. To review the information released by the GSA on their federal leasing policies and guidelines, visit the GSA Web site.
