Nick Vann, LEED A.P.

I am proud to announce that my amazingly talented, dashingly handsome, exceptionally intelligent, earth-loving, God-fearing husband, Nick Vann, is now an official LEED AP. What is a LEED AP? I'm so glad you asked. Well, lets start from the top:

"The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria. It is a third party certification program for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings...." (http://www.usgbc.org/)

So in other words, it takes a holistic approach to building buildings efficiently, healthfully and with low impact. Due to my little education in this area, I can't convey the multitudes of amazing things this means, but a few things are using passive solar, no VOC paints and renued resources during construction. Actually, the overall idea is super cool: LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.

They focus on all types of building:

So...it makes me wonder why all buildings aren't built with those same performance goals? Ah well...that is a different blog...for now we shall stick with Nick.

For years Nick has been wanting to become an Accredited Professional (AP) in LEED. The test is a gnarly, in depth, tricky little bugger but after hours upon hours upon hours of studying, he finally committed and took the test yesterday. I mean you should see the manual...I kept on confusing it for the phone book. This accreditation will be tremendously useful for Nick's job now at David Evans and Associates (DEA) and for the years to come. As the "earth friendly" trend continues to grow, and will one day become a standard, it will hopefully prompt builders and developers to turn to DEA looking for the professionals in this area. As of now, Nick is the only LEED AP in the Bellingham office. A tremendous triumph and blessing, as sustainability and green buildings is one of Nick's deepest passion.

I wanted to thank you all who were praying for him throughout this process...it was beyond helpful to know that there was a band of prayer going out for him...and the Lord answered, as He always does. So thank you and congrats to Nick! I am so proud!