BuiltZERO Intelligence · AI automation for sustainability certification
Eight hours of credit analysis.Fifteen minutes.
Zera is BuiltZERO’s AI automation layer for sustainability certification. It performs the GIS-heavy, lookup-heavy work that Accredited Professionals do by hand today — and routes every result through professional sign-off, so what comes out is a submission, not a suggestion.
Your sustainability intelligence.
8 hrs → 15 min
Typical LTc3 credit analysis, before and after
6 of 6
LTc3 points reachable through the two automated options
180+
Building footprints extracted and classified per run
100%
Automated output routed through auditor sign-off
How certification actually works
Three parties, one paper trail
A green building certification is never awarded directly to an owner. It is administered through a three-party structure — and almost all of the effort lands on one of them.
The asset owner
Wants the certification — for investor ESG mandates, tenant demand, municipal incentives or a corporate target.
The Accredited Professional
Assesses the asset, assembles the evidence, and acts as liaison between the owner and the certifying body. This is where the hours go.
The certifying body
Owns the rating system and awards the certification. It never visits the site — it adjudicates entirely on the documentation submitted.
Where the hours go
The AP’s work is
mostly arithmetic
In practice the role is far more evidentiary than advisory. Before any judgement gets exercised, someone has to:
- Digitise the site boundary in GIS software
- Generate the regulatory study buffer by hand
- Count and classify every rooftop inside it, from aerial imagery
- Look up each transit route's published weekday and weekend schedule
- Measure walking distances stop by stop, entry by entry
- Rebuild the whole calculation in a spreadsheet that can go stale
A senior analyst is typically given a full working day to produce this for a single credit, on a single project.
The demo
Address in. Scored credit out.
No GIS licence, no rooftop counting, no schedule lookups — and no black box either.
The pattern
Five steps, every credit
Each module Zera ships follows the same operating pattern. It is what lets the platform extend to a new credit — and, in time, a new rating system — without reinventing the workflow.
Address in
The project address is geocoded and a live satellite basemap centres on the parcel. No GIS licence, no service account, no separate export step.
Boundary drawn
The site boundary is traced directly over the imagery. The regulatory study buffer is generated from it automatically, to the radius the credit specifies.
Open geodata pulled
Every building footprint, transit stop and route inside the buffer is extracted from open datasets, with footprint area, floor count and use type estimated for each.
Auditor verification
The automated result is presented beside a manual entry field, an editable ledger and a justification note. Nothing proceeds on the machine's word alone.
The step that mattersScored credit out
Points are computed against the published thresholds, the qualifying pathway is stated in plain language, and the calculation is shown rather than hidden.
Zera automates the counting.Never the accountability.
Open geodata is never perfectly current. New construction, demolitions and misclassified use types are ordinary gaps — which is exactly why every automated figure is presented beside a manual count, an editable ledger and a justification note. The professional judgement and the liability-bearing signature stay where the certifying body requires them: with the Accredited Professional. That is the difference between a tool that produces an interesting number and one whose output can be submitted.
What is automated today
LEED v5 · Compact and Connected Development
Location & Transportation credit LTc3 carries six possible points across six options. Zera automates the two that are, in practice, the most GIS- and lookup-intensive to evidence by hand — and between them those two options can carry a project to the full six.
- Option 1Automated1–2 points
Surrounding Density
Site boundary drawn on live satellite imagery, the 400 m study buffer generated automatically, and every building footprint inside it extracted, classified and measured — then scored against both the combined-density and separate-density pathways at once.
- Option 2 · Path 1Automated1–4 points
Access to Transit — public transit service
Qualifying stops discovered inside the walking-distance buffer around each functional entry, route-level weekday and weekend trip counts aggregated from agency data, and points awarded per entry against the minimum-service thresholds.
- Option 3In development1–3 points
Walkable Location
Proximity-to-uses counting within the 800 m walking buffer, with the category and per-type caps the rating system applies to which uses may be counted.
- Option 4In development1–2 points
Connected Site
Boundary-adjacency analysis to establish the share of the project perimeter bordering previously developed parcels, separating adjacent from infill conditions.
- Option 6On the roadmap1–2 points
Surrounding Development & Resources
Development-and-adjacency classification and transportation-resource proximity, aimed at the logistics, data centre and distribution project types.
- Option 5On the roadmap1–2 points
Pedestrian Access
Attendance-boundary and dwelling-unit analysis for school projects, where pedestrian access from residential areas governs the award.
Thresholds, pathway-selection rules and ledger methodology are proprietary to BuiltZERO and are not published. Credit structure per USGBC LEED v5 BD+C: New Construction, LTc3.
Verified output
What a run actually returns
Two consecutive runs of the density engine on the same urban infill site, at different boundary vintages. Both runs completed in under two minutes of active tool time, including the verification step — against the working day the same analysis is normally budgeted.
On the transit module, the same site returned 222 weekday and 200 weekend trips at the main entrance — 3 points under the minimum-service thresholds.
| Metric | Run 1 | Run 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Buildings extracted and verified | 180 | 200 |
| Buildable buffer area | 137.26 acres | 138.90 acres |
| Total built gross floor area | 385,389 m² | 392,473 m² |
| Combined density | 30,223 sq ft/acre | 30,415 sq ft/acre |
| Residential density | 12.5 DU/acre | 12.5 DU/acre |
| Nonresidential FAR | 0.43 | 0.44 |
| Points awarded | 1 (combined density) | 1 (combined density) |
Why it is credible
Built by the people whodo the work.
Zera is not a mapping product with a sustainability skin. Both BuiltZERO founders are practising Accredited Professionals who have assembled these submissions by hand — so the platform encodes how the rating systems are actually assessed, not a software team’s reading of the documentation.
That is a hard combination to copy. Reproducing it credibly takes both the engineering and the accreditation.
Accreditations held by the founders
- LEED AP — USGBC
- BREEAM AP — BRE, UK
- WELL AP — IWBI
- WiredScore AP
- SmartScore AP
- RICS Certified BIM Manager
- PMP · PgMP — PMI
- CPMAI · ACP · CP
A co-founder — a senior sustainability analyst who performs this assessment work professionally — has applied the toolset on two live certification projects, producing the documentation submitted to the certifying body.
The family
One pattern, every rating system
The LEED modules are live. Everything below them is stated intent, sequenced by where our own accreditations let us encode the rules with the same authority.
Zera LEED
AutomatedLocation & Transportation credit automation
Zera WELL
On the roadmapWELL concept documentation and verification
Zera BREEAM
On the roadmapBREEAM issue tracking and evidence assembly
Zera Score
On the roadmapWiredScore and SmartScore connectivity rating
Zera Carbon
On the roadmapEmbodied carbon and whole-building LCA
Zera Materials
On the roadmapMaterial review, EPD and compliance screening
Working with Zera
Three ways in
Most clients start with managed analysis and move to a licence once the volume justifies it. Pricing is set against the professional hours the platform displaces, so it scales with what you actually run.
- Most common
Managed analysis
We run it. You get the submission pack.
BuiltZERO's accredited professionals run Zera on your project and hand back the scored credit, the calculation exhibit and the supporting maps — ready for the certifying body. The fastest route, and the one that needs nothing from your team but an address and a boundary.
- Per-project or per-credit engagement
- Signed off by a practising LEED AP
- Submission-ready calculation exhibits
- Advisory on raising the achievable rating
Firm licence
Your APs run it in-house.
For consultancies and in-house sustainability teams already doing this work manually. Seat-based access to the credit modules, with the same verification workflow and audit trail your own submissions require.
- Seat or firm-wide subscription
- Full auditor-verification workflow
- Onboarding for your AP team
- New credit modules as they ship
Embedded engine
Inside your own platform.
For ESG, proptech and portfolio-reporting products that need credit scoring as a capability rather than a destination. The calculation engine, licensed and white-labelled, without BuiltZERO owning your end-user relationship.
- API or white-label licence
- Portfolio and batch scoring
- Proprietary licence terms
- Co-developed roadmap
Questions
The ones that matter
Does this replace the Accredited Professional?
No — and it is designed not to. Zera automates the mechanical layer: tracing, counting, measuring and looking up. Every result passes through an explicit verification step where a credentialed professional confirms or overrides it and records the justification. The judgement and the liability-bearing sign-off stay with the AP, which is exactly what makes the output usable in a real submission.
Is the output accepted by the certifying body?
The certifying body reviews documentation, not software. Zera produces the calculation exhibits, figures and supporting maps that a submission requires, assembled the way an assessor expects to receive them — with a verification trail that a hand-built spreadsheet does not carry. A co-founder has used the toolset on live certification projects in his own practice.
Where does the underlying data come from?
Building footprints come from the open Overture Maps Foundation dataset, with transit stop and route data drawn from the operating agency. Open data is never perfectly current — new construction, demolitions and misclassified use types are normal gaps — which is precisely why the editable ledger and the manual verification step exist rather than being optional extras.
Which rating systems does it cover today?
LEED v5 Location & Transportation, specifically the Compact and Connected Development credit. The same pattern — boundary drawn, open geodata pulled, professional verification, threshold scoring — generalises to the proximity-based credits in WELL, BREEAM and the connectivity ratings, which is the order the roadmap follows.
Can it run across a whole portfolio?
The workflow is address-driven, so scoring many assets is a matter of volume rather than feasibility. For owners and funds assessing acquisition targets or an existing portfolio's certification potential, that is the difference between a practical exercise and one nobody attempts. Talk to us about batch analysis.
Work with us
Bring us an address.We’ll bring back a scored credit.
Whether you are certifying one asset, running an AP practice that does this by hand, or assessing a portfolio — tell us what you are working on.
Zera is proprietary software of BuiltZERO OÜ. Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, USGBC, GBCI, BRE, IWBI or WiredScore.