Most building owners are receiving compliance advice from energy consultants who cannot produce the DOB filings the law requires. The architect's role in LL97 compliance is underappreciated — and undersupplied.
Local Law 97 sets emissions limits for buildings over 25,000 square feet, with penalties for non-compliance starting in 2024 and tightening again in 2030. Energy consultants can model a building's performance and recommend upgrades, but many of the actual filings — energy audits tied to Chapter 8, retro-commissioning reports, and the technical narratives DOB expects — require a licensed architect or engineer to prepare and stamp.
We've seen owners bring in energy consultants early, get a strategy, and then discover late in the process that the paperwork DOB actually requires needs to come from a design professional. That gap costs time and, in a compliance deadline, time is the one thing you can't buy back.
Bringing an architect in from the start of the compliance process — not after the energy consultant's recommendations are already set — means the filing requirements shape the strategy instead of the other way around. For owners managing a portfolio against the 2030 deadline, that sequencing difference compounds fast.