Frank Robbins LEED AP

Over the last few months I've been telling everyone that'll listen that I've been "studying for my LEED exam". About two weeks ago, I decided to go ahead and schedule an exam because:

1. "I'm studying for my LEED exam" was starting to sound like "I'm working on my novel"
2. In 2009, the test will be even harder
3. If I passed it I would have six letters after my name. That's twice as many letters than a CPA and three times an MD!

What the hell is LEED?
LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It's a building accredidation program through the US Green Building Counsil (USGBC). Basically, if you want to have a LEED certified building, you have to follow some proscribed steps, design it in a certain way, document the heck out of it and have it all reviewed by the USGBC. Then you get to tell everyone you know that you have a LEED Certified building.

It's a complicated and involved process and so they set up a testing system to identify individuals who know how do to this (LEED APs). There are about 43,000 of them in the world, and now there is one more...me.

Gee, That Sounds Easy:
Well it's not, at least is wasn't for me. You have to be responsible for a heck of a lot of information, terms, calculations, percentages etc. Not being an engineer or an architect, I had to learn a lot of the terms for the first time. No worries, I like learning new things, and now that I know what a chlerestory is, I'm going to use it in my everyday vocabulary.

Here are the flash cards I made:


Who I can thank for this:

-Rachel: Thank you for giving me a copy of the Colorado Reference Guide, your study materials and answers to my assinine questions.
-Lauren G: Thanks for answering spot questions and turning me on to ARE Forums, I woulda been screwed without it!
-Laura: Thanks for watching everything while I studied for hours and hours.

What this means now:
Boy I don't know, I can put it on my cards, I look more serious than someone who just says, "I'm into green building." Oh and when I'm working my next LEED project, I'll be able to add a point to the overall scorsing under ID Credit 2!