Assessing Sustainability Indicators of a Commercial
Building: A LEED Approach
Construction industry has been proven to cause environmental problems ranging from excessive consumption of natural resources in construction, to the pollution of the environment. Studies on green building to minimize environmental impact are already underway. Tools of assessment of environmental performance of buildings are plenty. However, Middle East countries together with Gulf region are still away from practicing the concept of mitigating the impacts of buildings on the environment. Reasons could be relying on the insufficient awareness of building stakeholders, or the privilege of much fortune. The main objectives of this paper are to arouse the people's attention to the importance of assessment of environmental performance of buildings in KSA, and to introduce a sustainability model for project appraisal based on a multi-dimensional approach, that will be used for the assessment of a case study in KSA. The approach is using the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system as a guide for the assessment. The plan of work includes reviewing the literature on the assessment of sustainability performance of buildings, displaying the LEED system, and assessment of a commercial building in Dammam. The paper uses the descriptive approach to study the problem and collect the data, and the comparative approach to compare the obtained data with the required standards of LEED. The case study, which is a commercial complex in Dammam, is one of these types of buildings widely spread in the development schemes of current real estate investment in KSA. While the building achieved some credits and prerequisites of LEED system, the building lacks many other points. The overall credits achieved are 22%, and the overall prerequisites achieved are 43%. The main problem of the building is related to energy and atmosphere aspects.