CMP for International LEED APs

As LEED gains recognition throughout the world, many international people and American expats are seeking professional accreditation. Here in Italy, LEED Italia was recently launched as the first fully translated and localized LEED rating system outside of North America. However, because GBC Italia is relatively young, all LEED APs who live and work here in Italy are still subject to the maintenance requirements set forth by the American GBCI. That means English.

In order to maintain your LEED AP, you will need to exercise your English!

It’s true that some of the Continuing Education (CE) hours can be obtained through live presentations, self-study, and university programs in your home country that may be accepted by GBCI. However, as far as I know, there are no ERB approved courses outside of North America yet. If you want an easy way of knocking out all of your CE hours at once, there are several ERB-approved online courses specifically designed for LEED’s credential maintenance program. At the end of this page, I’ll talk about one that I did – Everblue.

Options for ‘Legacy LEED APs Without Specialty’

‘LEED APs without specialty’ is a long name for those of us who tested under LEED version 2.2 prior to October 27, 2009. Sometimes we are referred to as ‘Legacy LEED APs’. Most LEED APs here in Italy fall under this category. In order to keep our accreditation, we were required to do one of the following things in the two years following the switch to the new CMP system:

Testing for a Specialty

In order to do this you must have…

met all the prerequisites (including having had involvement with a LEED project within the past 3 years),
paid the testing fees,
signed the disciplinary agreement,
and agreed to the credential maintenance program.

Most Italian LEED APs practicing here could not achieve this, simply because there are a limited number of LEED projects to work on here in Italy. Plus, who wants to take a test again?

Prescriptive Credential Maintenance

For this option (which was the most popular) you were required to

In the two years following your subscription to that program, you are required to take a range of classes that meet the prescriptive requirements set out by the GBCI in order to demonstrate your continued education within the various subjects involved with LEED. Of these 30 hours, 24 hours must be dedicated to the 7 different prescribed categories, as well as 6 hours dedicated to LEED specific education. The details about how to properly chose Continuing Education (CE) hours can get a little confusing. Utimately, you must follow the up-to-date guidelines published by GBCI.

Or You Did Nothing

If you decided to do nothing (or if you forget or procrastinate until you have no other option!) you will not lose your accreditation. You will not, however, be able to list a specialty in your title. Over time, the accreditation ‘LEED AP without specialty’ will become a bit outdated and you are longer able to help a project earn a point as a LEED AP. The plus side is that you will never have to pay any fees or take any continuing education. Basically you will be phased out.

How to Maintain your CMP Credits from Abroad

As an expat American LEED AP, living and working in Italy, one of my biggest concerns is maintaining my credentials. I am fortunate in that I live in one of only 2 countries that has developed its own LEED rating system (the other being Canada). LEED Italia may in the future initiate its own program, but for now they are still reliant on GBCI’s method of accountability for all LEED APs. That means English!

LEED CMP | eight ways to earn CE hours

There are 8 acceptable methods for receiving your continued education (shown above).

The easiest to find and the cheapest to attend are live presentations and the self-study option. However, remember that there is a limit on the number of hours you can achieve through these two methods.

If you are able to spend the time and dedication to get published, then congratulations.

From an international location, participating in a LEED project and doing committee and volunteer work are difficult to attain.

If you want to spend way more money than necessary, you could sign up for a University program or a Lincesing course of some sort… although it would difficult to show that all the prescriptive requirements have been met.

Last but not least is the option to attend ERB approved courses… as many as you want. You’ll get charged, but you’ll also get quality content and you won’t be paying for an entire University or licensing program.

I decided to go with Everblue’s CMP package. This is basically 30 hours tailored specifically to the prescriptive path for Legacy LEED APs. The courses are available through biweekly live webinars, for which you get credit just for attending, and on-demand recorded webinars, for which you must take a simple quiz to prove you were paying attention.

At the end you get a Certificates of Completion for all 30 hours of your continuing education requirements, which is super easy to submit to GBCI. And you’re done.

The package comes with a price tag, of course. However, the advantage is that you save the time and energy of seeking out and documenting live presentations and self-study options, and then filling in the categories you couldn’t find with expensive University or ERB approved courses anyways. Not to say that there are not cheap options out there – there are. But if you’re hoping to get consistently high quality presentations that also meet the various prescriptive requirements, you must be willing to dedicate some time to that.