LEED Exam

If you want to pursue LEED accreditation, then you have to be ready to do a little planning. You will have to meet certain eligibility requirements before you are even permitted to sit for the first LEED exam. To get the LEED AP+ designation you will have to sit for two exams. The first tier is the Green Associate exam, which is discussed in the following paragraphs.

To be eligible to take the first tier LEED exam, you must have documented proof meeting one of the following criteria.

Tier 1 LEED Exam Requires Some Green Experience

You must have experience on a LEED registered project. You must be involved in the project in some capacity. You can be heavily involved or you can be active on a more superficial level, and either one is acceptable as long as you are actively involved in a LEED registered project.

You must have experience working in a sustainable or green field of work. This experience can involve your current job if your employer is involved in the green movement in any way. The board is looking for any link to sustainability or environmentalism as it pertains to green construction. If you are an architect of engineer, then this requirement should not be at all difficult to meet. If instead you work for someone like a product manufacturer, the link may not be quite as obvious; so you may need to do a little explaining to explain how your company and your project are considered sustainable.

You must have taken classes that address green construction principles. What constitutes acceptable educational programs is still a little murky. GBCI is working on clarification, and obviously the higher the institution, the more likely that it will be an acceptable prerequisite for the Green Associate exam. For example, if you are studying sustainability at the university level, then you have a much better chance of this class being accepted as meeting the criteria than if you took a green sustainability class through your business and received a certificate of completion.

You must be able to present documentation proving that you meet at least one of the criteria listed above. There are a couple of acceptable forms of documentation are a letter from your supervisor or teacher describing your involvement in a LEED registered project. For the educational component, a completion certificate or an official transcript is also acceptable documentation. This documentation must be presented along with your application for the LEED exam.

Once you have met all of the requirements for the Green Associate exam, you are ready to begin your exam preparation with a provider like Everblue Training Institute. Give yourself some time to study for the test. The exam consists of 100 questions and it is administered over the course of two hours at a Prometric testing center. LEED exam results are returned to you immediately after the test, and once you pass the exam, you can add LEED Green Associate to your resume. Then you are ready to begin your test prep for the tier 2 LEED AP+ designation.