Online at https://parksmartadvisorsurvey.carrd.

co/

PARKSMART ADVISOR
2019 SURVEY RESPONSES
To help guide the future development of Parksmart, in December of 2019 we
surveyed 308 Parksmart Advisors. (Parksmart Advisors are trained, certified
practitioners in the craft of Parksmart certification and are among the most
engaged users of the program.)

We asked them to tell us about Parksmart’s strengths and challenges, share

their marketing and other suggestions, and rate Parksmart on a 5-point
scale.

67 Parksmart Advisors out of the 270 with current email addresses filled out
our survey. (1)

Here's what they said:

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 RATING
71% of the Advisors rated Parksmart 4 or 5, where and 5 = “Awesome” and
1 = “Dreary.”

STRENGTHS
Here’s a representative sample of responses on Parksmart’s strengths:

o “(1) Affiliation with GBCI/USGBC, (2) many of the design measures

track reasonably well with LEED, (3) overall, it is a decent road map
for environmentally sustainable design and operation of parking
facilities”
o “Attempts to green something that isn’t necessarily green but vital to
society“
o “360º vision, clear relationship with mobility, enhance all kind of
sustainable mobility”
o “Making an entire project team think globally on how their project can
be sustainable not only from a design standpoint, but also during
construction and into the maintenance and operations of the facility."
o "I think the strength is that is does give a clear and concise way of
looking at parking facilities regarding making them greener instead of
a “after thought” of the building itself."
o "It provides a way for LEED certification for parking decks."

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 o “Appreciated the opportunity to discuss issues when they arose even if
there was disagreement over process and procedure.”

OPPORTUNITIES
Most of the remaining comments fell into three key areas: (a) marketing, (b)
value proposition, and (c) product evolution. Each of these three topics was
commented upon by roughly 40% of the responding Parksmart Advisors. (2)

A representative collection of the comments, grouped by these topics,

follows:

A. MARKETING
o "Getting the word out."
o "Building the hype around facilities that have already achieved
certification, much like LEED has been able to do, would increase the
appeal of the certification."
o "Conveying demonstrated examples of success; publicizing these to
and within the Parksmart Advisor network would be a good thing to
do, maybe through a quarterly newsletter or e-mail updates?"
o "Although I am seeing Parksmart show up a lot more in RFPs and
project criteria, owners still do not differentiate from LEED certification
nor do they know that LEED does not address parking structures or the
association of Parksmart with GBCI"
o "I typically describe parking "sustainability" as an extension of the
commercial or residential buildings they serve, and a critical
component of the built environment. It would be helpful for the USGBC
to present Parksmart in that context, in the portfolio of certifications
for the built environment. Currently, Parksmart isn't even visible (as
far as I can determine) from the USGBC web site."
o "Local case studies and business cases. Key stakeholders to know and
understand benefits of this rating system."
o "Availability or suggestions for specific measures such as recycled
receipts, etc."
o "Active community base."

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 B. VALUE PROPOSITION
o “Cost-benefit analyses”
o “Case studies”
o “More definitive info on benefits and why. Perhaps have it bundled with
Mobility TNCs and EV charge companies.”
o “When Selling Parksmart: a way to demonstrate value and answer that
question that prospects always ask "What is the (financial) benefit of
becoming Parksmart certified?" LEED did a great job of answering that
with the study on higher rent valuations and higher occupancy.”
o “An easy to understand message to demonstrate (quantify) the value
(financial payback, ROI, increased revenue, etc.) of Parksmart
Certification.”
o “Profitability, real examples of good payback, focus on triple bottom
line, information about % cost increase, relation to LEED.”

C. PRODUCT EVOLUTION
GENERAL
o “(1) Where projects are pursuing LEED certification, Parksmart should
be set up as a relatively simple add-on, (2) refocus to weight design
measures heavier than operational measures, (3) simplify
documentation... for example pre-formatted forms might be helpful. “
o “Too focused on operations vs. design and construction.“
o “Why should a project pursue Parksmart certification if it is already
pursuing LEED?“
o “Because the standard is so focused on post-construction operations, it
is very difficult for the design and construction team to document
many measures required for garage certification. Designers typically
have very limited understanding of and access to garage operations,
especially if a third party private operator is involved. Historically,
LEED certification is part of the design and construction process, and
owners interested in certification typically budget that as a soft
construction cost. With a number of Parksmart measures requiring
months of documentation of operating procedures, coupled with the
relatively intensive documentation process and the fact that most
designers and contractors are no longer engaged in the project
following occupancy, Parksmart is too cumbersome for most owners. “

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o “It would be great if projects are provided an option to track their
ongoing performance in Arc platform (similar to LEED v4.1 O+M).“
o “I believe the Parksmart certification should be totally integrated with
the USGBC process and not as a stand-alone. this integration may
allow a larger acceptance by building owners & managers and as a
result more parking structures would be certified green. “
o “In our projects, GBCI's interpretations have been a bit rigid relative to
my experience with LEED projects. Also, the large menu of options is
not organized neatly like the traditional design and construction
categories in LEED BD+C. “
o “With teams trained on LEED, the slight variations in Parksmart are a
hang up.“
o “Creating a sample outline of O&M best practices for owners to follow.“
o “In California, the Parksmart standards are aligned in a lot of areas
with the CalGreen requirements, so convincing our future garage
owners is a bit easier, since most of the efforts and sustainable
decisions are already incorporated into the project budget by code.
The documentation process ends up being costly, and that becomes
the turn-down issue; if the documentation was more table based with
simpler forms and requirements, the cost to owners would be more
acceptable.”
o “The 3-year expiration on Certification should be eliminated. I realize
that so far garages have not had to recertify but the "official" position
that I have to give prospects is that they need to recertify after 3
years.”

MEASURE SPECIFIC
o “Changing with the times. Examples of Parksmart Measures become
outdated as technology improves.
o “It seems like a "light" refreshing of the Standard could be useful.
There are measures (LCA, Design for Durability, LPD calculation) that
have been updated informally but aren't really published. There are
measures that could be tweaked to better accomplish its goals (TMA,
EVSE, Bike Share, cleaning parking decks, etc.). And, there are a
number of concepts that would be nice to start integrating into the
Standard (the growing google doc of proposals). This is not a
hindrance to selling Parksmart and I don't think a major revision is
needed but an incremental one (i.e.: version 1.1) would be nice to
clean up and 'modernize' the document.”

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 o “More credit should be given to the use of recycled garage materials
and designing the structure for durability."
o “Provide examples of alternative methods for points.”
o “Should add resiliency measures such as flooding, in each category.”
o “Some credits may be too stringent for our industry to achieve. Yes,
we want to "reach" and have our applicants stretch to reach greater
goals - but it may be more difficult to achieve than we originally
intended.”

CAMPUS/SYSTEM APPROACH
o “Clear understanding of campus wide points. LEED based points vs.
environmental based points. We don't meet exact requirements but
have more impact. LEVS & ZEVS vs Vanpools & carpools. What’s better
more clean vehicles or half the number of pretty clean vehicles.”
o “Need more help/direction on Campus approaches so we are not
starting over each time.”
o “I think one the challenges is could Parksmart possibly offer the ability
to grade campus parking (office, school, or hospital) especially if they
have parking facilities that are spread as a single unit instead of trying
to certify each parking facility on that campus separately.”
o “Continue to think that not including flat surface lots is leaving many
great facilities out and not encouraging those lots to operate in a more
sustainable manner.”

NEXT STEPS
Now in its 5th year of operation, Parksmart has 126 projects formally
registered, many more on their way, and 32 Parksmart certified parking
structures. Collectively, we now have enough experience under our belts to
figure out what’s working and what to strengthen.

We asked the Parksmart Advisors to tell us what next steps Parksmart

should take – and they (you!) took our request to heart. Thank you! Stay
tuned for how we incorporate these invaluable comments into our 2020
work.

One identified area we are moving on immediately is to better quantify and

illustrate the Parksmart value proposition. We know the 32 certified parking
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structures offer a wealth of data on improved performance, reduced
operating expenses, and contributions to community health and vitality. In
collaboration with the International Parking and Mobility Institute, we will be
compiling this data and will work with our USGBC marketing team to make it
accessible to all. We’ll be reaching out soon about that project. (If you are
not already on our mailing list, sign up at the bottom of
www.parksmart.gbci.org.

There’s an old saying, “Bloom where you are planted.” For those of us
planted in the parking and mobility worlds, Parksmart is a tool helping us
bloom ever brighter. Looking forward to tilling the soil with you in the new
decade.

- Paul

Paul Wessel
Director, Market Development
US Green Building Council
pwessel@usgbc.org

1/7/20

(1) For the email wonks among you: We had a 55.6% open-rate (150) from 294 good
emails addresses. Of those 150, 67 filled out our Google survey.

(2) Of the 67 responses:

-----29 suggested product improvements
-----27 suggested better marketing
-----25 encouraged ROI and cost-benefit info