The United States Green Building Council's (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program sets a definitive standard for what constitutes a "Green Building".

The program is based on nationally accepted energy and environmental standards and principles that strike a balance between known effective practices and emerging technologies.

The U.S. Green Building Council is the governing body for LEED and is the nation's foremost coalition of leaders from across the building industry working to promote buildings that are socially and environmentally responsible, profitable, and healthy places to live and work.

Milestones Building and Design can help new commercial construction & major renovation projects, category (LEED-NC), and existing building operations, category (LEED-EB) attain points towards one of the four levels of LEED certification: basic, silver, gold or platinum. The level achieved is based on the total number out of 100 possible points across six categories.

What is LEED?

LEED is a third party certification program and the nationally accepted benchmark for the design,
construction and operation of high performance green buildings. Developed by the U.S. Green Building
Council in 2000 through a consensus based process, LEED serves as a tool for buildings of all types and
sizes. LEED certification offers third party validation of a project’s green features and verifies that the
building is operating exactly the way it was designed to.

What types of buildings can use LEED?

LEED certification is available for all building types including new construction and major renovation;
existing buildings; commercial interiors; core and shell; schools and homes. LEED systems for
neighborhood development, retail and healthcare are currently pilot testing. To date, there is over 4.5
billion square feet of construction space involved with the LEED system.

How does LEED work?

LEED is a point based system where building projects earn LEED points for satisfying specific green
building criteria. Within each of the seven LEED credit categories, projects must satisfy particular
prerequisites and earn points.

The five categories include

Sustainable Sites (SS),

Water Efficiency (WE),

Energy and Atmosphere (EA),
Materials and Resources (MR) and

Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ).

An additional category,
Innovation in Design (ID), addresses sustainable building expertise as well as design measures not
covered under the five environmental categories.

The number of points the project earns determines the level of LEED Certification the project receives. LEED certification is available in four progressive levels according to the following scale:

There are 100 base points; 6 possible Innovation in Design and 4 Regional Priority points
Certified 40–49 points
Silver 50–59 points
Gold 60–79 points
Platinum 80 points and above

Following are the Categories that Milestones fabric buildings fall under when collecting points and credits for your LEED Certification:

Fabric Buildings Have Natural Lighting - No Affect on Power Grid
No Groundwater Impact
Fabric Buildings Promote Occupant Health and Improves Productivity
Aesthetically Pleasing Environment
Fabric Buildings Improve Air Quality - Effective Ventilation and Air Volume
Fabric Buildings Are Made from Recyclable Materials

Following are the LEED credits that are influenced by tension fabric structures. Each credit is labeled as active or passive; active credits are those that involve product specific performance requirements (i.e. recycled content of product or VOC performance), and passive credits, those that are dependent upon design specific
conditions (i.e. designer adding glazing for day lighting).

LEED NC 2009

MR Credit 4: Recycled Content (active)
Our tension fabric structures utilize steel composed of 57% post-industrial recycled steel and 31% post-consumer recycled steel.

IEQ Credit 2: Increased Ventilation (passive)
Our fabric buildings can contribute to a comprehensive plan that provides additional outdoor air ventilation to improve indoor air quality for improved occupant comfort, well-being and productivity.

IEQ Credit 4.2: Low Emitting Materials, Paints & Coatings (active)
The tension fabric buildings that Milestones provides are manufactured with a selection of coatings that meet or exceed AAMA 2005.