Photos © Image ECOterre

Drummers perform as delegates file down the halls of Montreal's Palais des congres during the opening day of the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) national summit.

The Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) has unveiled a new iteration of its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program for the facility operations stage.

LEED Canada for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance 2009 provides ongoing certification on the performance and maintenance of buildings that have either never been LEED-certified or have been certified under other LEED programs. It examines actual performance (rather than design expectations), recognizing ongoing efforts of building owners and managers to continually improve facility performance.

The council also launched its Green Up: Canada's Building Performance Program. The initiative allows building owners and operators to track and record the performance of their facilities against energy/water consumption metrics. The program also provides various tools, benchmarks, workshops, and comparison data.

The programs were officially launched at CaGBC's annual national summit, which was held at the Palais de congrès in Montreal. The conference brought together more than 1350 delegates from industry, government, and design/construction.

CaGBC also used this opportunity to acknowledge some of the country's green building proponents. Among those honoured at the show's gala was Doug Webber, P.Eng., LEED AP, who received a Chapter Leadership Award for his work with CaGBC's Toronto Chapter. Webber, the sustainable design manager at engineering/consulting firm, Halsall Associates, co-wrote the article, "LEED and Durability: How sustainable is CaGBC's new credit?" with Aaron Skeates, B.Eng., for the May 2005 issue of Construction Canada.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the summit. Three representatives of CaGBC—Peter Busby (outgoing chair), Thomas Mueller (president and CEO), and Kevin Hydes (board member) handle the honours with Gail Vittori, chair of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).