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Building Council's Government Committee and Emily Rauch became a member of the Research Committee. Their recent involvement in these groups has confirmed the need for a whole building performance measurement protocol, but has not directly impacted the project. i Preface This protocol was written for the Department of Energy"s Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) to be used by the public as a tool for assessing building cost and performance measurement. The primary audiences are sustainable design professionals, asset owners, building managers, and research professionals within the Federal sector. The protocol was developed based on the need for measured performance and cost data on sustainable design projects. Historically there has not been a significant driver in the public or private sector to quantify whole building performance in comparable terms. The deployment of sustainable design into the building sector has initiated many questions on the performance and operational cost of these buildings. This protocol aims to generate high-level comparative measurement results of the performance of sustainably designed buildings. Originally developed in 2004-2005, this revised protocol reflects lessons learned from various studies and projects where the protocol was used as a primary tool for measuring whole building performance. This protocol includes two sets of metrics that need to be collected for each facility: building and site characteristics data and building cost and performance data. The metrics were selected for ease of collection, usefulness or relevance of the information to sustainability and the expected quality of the data to be collected. Each of the metrics identified in this protocol are considered important to offer a representative indication of building performance, however, due to anticipated data availability, some metrics have been identified as optional, and others have been removed from the list provided in revision 1. The data analysis and communication of results target the financial decision makers" need for measured performance and cost data on sustainable design projects. This protocol was not intended to answer all questions regarding the performance of sustainably designed buildings, but rather to offer indicators of performance and cost to further the knowledge base for the sustainable design business case. To date, the protocol has been used by the U.S. Navy to measure the performance of five sustainably designed buildings as compared to typically designed buildings in the same location and with similar use profiles. The protocol has also been used in a General Services Administration study to evaluate and compare the performance of twelve sustainably designed federal buildings located throughout the U.S. with both national and regional building performance averages. Other Federal agencies and private organizations are in the process or are considering using the metrics as well.