Green Building and LEED Editing and Proofreading Services

A property listing describes an office building as "LEED Certified" in the same sentence as descriptions of premium finishes and high-end amenities, and a prospective tenant reasonably assumes this places the building among the greener options on the market. What "LEED Certified" actually means is the lowest of four certification tiers, achieved by scoring above the minimum point threshold and nothing more, and a building could have scored one point above that line or one point below Platinum, the highest tier, and both would be described by different owners using entirely different levels of the same word "certified" or omitted its tier for the ones that scored low.

We edit what building owners, developers and property managers produce to disclose green building certification — LEED and certification tier disclosures, credit category and point score explanations, performance versus design certification distinctions, and the correspondence responding to a tenant's or buyer's question about what a specific certification actually reflects. Our editors work on the word "certified" and the tier it is standing in for.

The specific certification tier is what a green building claim actually needs to state, and its failure is a general reference to certification that omits which of four meaningfully different tiers was actually achieved. LEED Certified describes the entry-level tier specifically, and a listing that says only "LEED Certified" without stating that this is the lowest tier is technically accurate and lets many readers assume something closer to the programme's highest standard. We work through these so the specific tier — Certified, Silver, Gold, or Platinum — is always named rather than a general reference to LEED certification, since these represent meaningfully different point thresholds and a reader comparing buildings needs to know which tier each one actually achieved; so the point score itself is disclosed where available, given that a building scoring just above a tier's minimum and one scoring near the next tier's threshold are both described by the same tier name, and the actual score shows how close to the next level a building came; so the credit categories that contributed most to the score are named, because a building can score well on materials and waste while scoring poorly on energy performance, and a tenant with a specific priority needs to know which categories actually drove the certification; so the distinction between design certification and performance certification is stated explicitly, given that a building certified for its design does not automatically demonstrate that it performs as designed once occupied, and these are different claims a reader needs to be able to tell apart; so certification age is disclosed, since a certification achieved a decade ago under different standards and systems in a building that has not been recertified is a different claim from a recent one; and so a tenant's specific question about what a certification actually reflects receives the actual tier, score and category breakdown, not a repetition of the word "certified." Disclosures written this way mean "certified" tells a reader something they can actually compare.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including building data, certification records and tenant correspondence. We are editors rather than LEED consultants, building certification specialists or sustainability engineers, and we offer no view on certification scoring, standards or building performance. What we can do is make sure the tier behind the word is actually stated.