If you are reading this blog, you are likely well-versed in social media or have at least heard of Twitter.*  Through Twitter (follow me here), I have had some amazing conversations about green building and the law and I would like to share one of them with you that really highlights how quickly a green building project can go bad. 

Sara Sweeney is an architect in New Jersey specializing in sustainable building research and consulting.  She is also a twitter user and recently started a blog.  The following is an actual conversation she and I had on Twitter: 

sarasweeney: Working on LEED application. Totally confused myself. Had 1 pt down for LEED Energy & Atmosphere Credit 1, when we had 6. Phew. All is right with world again.
 
chrischeatham: Glad you fixed that. Makes me wonder what happens when someone doesn’t actually catch this type of mistake…
 
sarasweeney:  Yes, was wondering what I was going to tell the client for about 15 minutes. Um, we actually are Silver now…

Sara is smart and, thankfully, she caught her mistake.  But this short conversation demonstrates how easy it is to make a mistake that costs a project LEED certification.  For every 100 consultants or architects correctly filling out LEED applications, there will be one that does not.  One mistake, like what Sara described, could result in a project obtaining LEED Silver certification when the owner was anticipating LEED Gold certification.     

*If you would like to learn more about twitter, watch this video.  You can also follow my twitter stream here.  Twitter is going to be all the rage in 2009, you should jump on board now.