Challenge Your Exam Readiness With Our Free LEED Green Associate Practice Questions

The Integrative Process begins with the Owner’s Project Requirements (OPR)—a concise statement of the owner’s goals for performance, operations, comfort, durability, maintenance, and budget. The design team then drafts the Basis of Design (BOD), translating those goals into measurable technical responses (envelope targets, HVAC concepts, ventilation strategies, lighting/controls, water budgets). A qualified, independent commissioning authority (CxA) should be engaged early—at least by schematic design—to review OPR/BOD alignment, advise on testability, and integrate commissioning requirements (trend points, sequences, acceptance criteria) into specifications. This early engagement catches conflicts before they harden and preserves low-cost, cross-disciplinary synergies. Waiting until punch list collapses commissioning into defect checks and misses systemic issues. Vendors are valuable later for product data, but they should not define performance objectives or substitute for multidisciplinary design judgment. Getting OPR → BOD → CxA involvement right turns early analyses (energy “shoebox,” preliminary water balance) into enforceable outcomes that survive value engineering and streamline LEED documentation.