Green Building Initiative

Green Building Initiative (GBI) is a nonprofit organization that administers green building assessment and certification services in the United States. It was established in 2004 and is headquartered in Portland, Oregon. The GBI is the U.S. licensee of the Green Globes rating system.

The GBI acquired the U. S. rights to the Canadian Green Globes building assessment and certification program in 2004 and adapted it for the U.S. market as an alternative to the LEED building rating systems. This eventually included modules for New Construction (NC), Continual Improvement of Existing Buildings (CIEB), and CIEB Healthcare for the healthcare industry. The GBI offers these programs to builders, designers and building managers.

The Green Globes certification program was launched in the U.S. in 2005 as an online building design management tool for architects and builders of sustainable commercial buildings. Green Globes originated from a system started in 1990 in the United Kingdom called BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method). In an effort to make the tool more user-friendly, the Building Research Establishment, merged the BREEAM standard with a questionnaire-based rating tool. Later, it was converted to a web-based format and renamed Green Globes. Green Globes is marketed through the GBI in the U.S.

(Quelle: Wikipedia.org)