FitzGerald Delivers Green Ratings System Cost Comparison Report

FitzGerald Associates Architects has completed an Urban Green Building Rating Systems Cost Comparison report for the National Association of Home Builders. The report contains an extensive comparison of the Chicago Green Homes Program, the ICC-NAHB National Green Building Standard, and LEED for Homes.
The report evaluates the additional costs of elevating three sample code-compliant, urban, residential building types–a single family home, a townhouse, and a six-flat–in the City of Chicago into compliance with the three predominant green building ratings systems as of March 2010. These three typical urban housing types were utilized for the cost evaluation of each certification level of the three green building rating systems.
The comparison, executed by selected large- and small-volume builders and LEED Accredited Professional architects from FitzGerald Associates, provides expertise to define the base housing types and select products and practices to achieve ratings under each of the green home building systems. Products and practices were selected based on the need for obtaining points in each system’s categories, the cost of the verification, its feasibility and regional appropriateness, and repeatability in a production home building environment.
The firm anticipates the full text of the report to be available through the NAHB Research Center this summer.