Sustainability Leadership Series: Buildings and Operations - LEED v5 Sustainability as Risk Management
Buildings face more than schedule and budget risks. Extreme heat, flooding, rising resource costs, changing requirements, and material disruptions can all affect whether a building performs as intended. What changes when sustainability becomes part of managing those risks from the start?
In a recent webinar, Lauren Wallace explored how LEED v5 helps project teams identify vulnerabilities early, make more informed design decisions, and measure the results. She also connected the framework to Drawdown Georgia, showing how statewide climate priorities can become practical choices for individual buildings.
For new construction, LEED v5 calls for early assessments of climate resilience, human impact, and carbon. These assessments give owners, architects, engineers, and contractors a chance to address exposure while they still have design options.
Highlights from the webinar include:
A climate hazard becomes a project risk when a building is vulnerable to it. Flooding, for example, has different consequences depending on where critical equipment is placed and how operations will continue.
Roughly half of LEED v5’s available points focus on decarbonization, including operational and embodied carbon, refrigerants, and transportation.
Teams must quantify embodied carbon in major building materials. Requesting carbon data and lower-carbon options early can help them plan around availability, cost, and lead times.
Resilience can take many forms, from better building envelopes and stormwater management to backup power and emergency operations planning.
Measurement and independent verification give organizations stronger evidence for sustainability reporting. Certification supports that work, but it is not a guarantee of financial returns or protection from every hazard.
The central takeaway: bringing sustainability professionals into planning and early design gives teams more ways to protect long-term building performance while advancing Georgia’s climate goals.