I had a great chat Friday with Shari Shapiro of the Green Building Law blog. The topic of discussion was whether the general standard of care in construction that includes knowing and building to the building code encompasses meeting LEED benchmarks found in some but far from all codes.

I posted onto my Tumblr and Posterous pages looking to get thoughts and got such a good reaction that I felt I had to post here.I can see both sides of this issue. On the one hand, standard of care has always gone to fitness for its purpose and not to aesthetics and energy efficiency. On the other, if the building code says to meet certain LEED benchmarks (NY for instance), it could be a part of the standard of care.

The real issue is that this should never be left to chance and any LEED issues need to be dealt with in a contract.

Please join the discussion and let me know any thoughts that this may generate. Also, check out the blogs on my blog roll including Shari’s! Thanks.