The Link at Nocatee: Testing the Frame
My first role in sustainability consulting. At Greentree Global I ran a preliminary whole-building LCA for The Link at Nocatee, an office building in Florida, to support its LEED credit targets — and prepared IGBC certification documentation for a historic building in Mumbai and for the Mumbai metro rail.
I joined Greentree Global in November 2021 as a Sustainability Consultant Trainee — the first job where sustainability was the title rather than a side brief. It ran until April 2022, with HomeLane design work on weekends alongside it.
The main project was The Link at Nocatee, an owner-occupied office building in Florida working toward LEED. Back in India, I was also preparing IGBC documentation for The DRM in Mumbai Central and for the Mumbai metro rail.
Whole-building LCA for LEED v4. LEED's Building Life-Cycle Impact Reduction credit rewards a design that measurably outperforms a comparable baseline building across six environmental impact categories. For The Link I modelled both — the baseline and the proposed design — in the Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings, and compared them cradle to grave (modules A to C) using the TRACI 2.1 impact method.
Most of the work was in the assumptions. Element by element — foundations, columns and beams, floors, roof and walls — I set out what each version of the building was made of, and handed those assumptions back to the project team to check before anything was locked in. The biggest lever was the structural frame: a concrete frame in the baseline, against hollow structural steel columns and wide-flange steel beams in the proposed design.
Alongside the model, I evaluated EPDs and manufacturer self-declarations for the project's materials against the LEED credit targets. Greentree was also where I learned One Click LCA.
IGBC certification documentation. Closer to home, I prepared IGBC documentation for two very different projects:
- The DRM, Mumbai Central — IGBC EB-OM (Existing Buildings: Operation & Maintenance) certification documentation for a historic building.
- Mumbai metro rail — IGBC MRTS certification documentation, with technical reports and compliance narratives.
A preliminary whole-building LCA, delivered with its full set of baseline and proposed assumptions for the project team to review — the groundwork a LEED life-cycle credit is built on. The results and building details belong to the client, so they stay off this page.
It was also my first whole-building LCA: the kind of work I went on to do for luxury retail and hospitality brands at BEE Incorporation.