SPECIAL SECTION Roofing
Project Name: Meridian Vineyards Roof Restoration Project Location: Paso Robles, Calif. Photo Courtesy Of: D.C. Taylor Co.
New industry guidelines aim to get roofing renovations right
by Jim Hoff W
hen the U.S. Green Building Council initiat- ed the Leadership in Energy and Environ -
mental Design (LEED) Green Building program in 2001, one of its primary objectives was to "transform the built environment." Now, a decade beyond the introduc- tion of LEED, the evidence of trans- formation is clear. Ten thousand LEED buildings have been certified, more than 100,000 LEED-AP profes- sionals participate in the LEED pro-
Dr. Jim Hoff (jhoff@roofingcenter.org) is the research direc- tor for the Center for Environmental Innovation in Roofing, and president of TEGNOS Research Inc., a research organi- zation dedicated to advancing understanding of the build- ing envelope. Dr. Hoff also serves as a board member of the Roof Consultants Institute Foundation and the Cool Roof Rating Council.
gram, and almost every supplier of building materials offers some type of "LEED Checklist" for its products. Following the success of LEED, a similar transformation is occurring in the commercial roofing industry. At the beginning of 2011, the Center for Environmental Innovation in Roofing, a Washington, D.C., non- profit, launched a sustainable guide- line for roofing systems that seeks to transform roofing – both in practice and public perception. This new guideline – called RoofPoint – is sim- ilar in function and structure to green building rating systems such as LEED, but it embraces important dif- ferences by offering unique value to building owners and the green build- ing community.
68 Commercial Construction & Renovation September/October 2012
Similar to other green rating pro- grams, RoofPoint functions as a crite- rion-based assessment system for sus- tainable roofs, featuring broad cate- gories of environmental impact with specific strategies to reduce environ- mental impact within each category. These credits are assessed against spe- cific measurable goals, and the sum- mation of this assessment is expressed as a total point score. Roofing proj- ects meeting a minimum score over- all. Next, each major category is rec- ognized to embody the key principles of sustainable roofing.
Comprehensive Roofing Guide
Although the basic structure of RoofPoint is similar to existing