In recent years, as the environmental and resource impacts of the construction and operation of federal facilities have become well known, both the legislative and executive branches of the Federal government have established a series of mandates and orders requiring energy and sustainability performance in Federal Buildings. These mandates affect both  the operation of Federal Agencies, and construction work (both new and major remodel) undertaken on Federal Buildings.

In addition to the government-wide mandates, many individual agencies have their own sustainability guidelines or requirements. Many of these were adopted prior to the recent mandates, and broadly mirror LEED, although often they have not kept up with the changes from LEED 1.1 to 2.2. Because of this, individual agency requirements are likely to be similar to, but subtly different from the Federal Mandates. It is beyond the scope of this paper to address specifi c agency requirements. It is important, therefore, to analyze the individual agency requirements alongside the Federal Mandates.