University of Colorado Boulder
IN-3: Innovation 3

An review of this STARS submittal was provided by a third party, Sustrana LLC, during June-September, 2014. Sustrana's review insures that the report is complete, the data are consistent and responsive to the requirements of each credit, and that the information provided is compliant with the reporting requirements as provided in the STARS Technical Manual. To our knowledge, no other STARS submittal has been voluntarily reviewed by a third party for the above parameters. As such, this approach is innovative nationally.
http://www.sustrana.com/sustainability-in-higher-education

The review provided by Sustrana identified 33 instances where responses were found to be insufficient. Of those, 30 were found to have missing and/or irrelevant data and 17 were found where required linked documentation was not functional or incorrectly linked.

Over all categories, 35 credits were found to have some defect with the majority being broken links, inconsistent baseline data, or other minor technical errors. However, four significant errors were identified that included inadvertent double counting, incorrect narrative, and one computational error.

All identified deficiencies and issues were remedied prior to submittal. Remedies included inclusion of corrected data, repairs of broken links, documentation of required criteria, deletion of double counted data, changing some credits to 'not pursuing," and/or better clarification of required information.

The revised STARS report was again submitted to Sustrana for review of our corrective actions. Upon Sustrana's re-review a letter attesting to the review and its findings was delivered to the University of Colorado Boulder.

Note 1: Sustrana's Findings Letter is posted here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw35kOQrHucIUXFQSGUtNzJ6MVE/edit?usp=sharing

Note 2: The Sustrana review insured that the data included was the appropriate data for each credit, but makes no such affirmation of the accuracy of these data. So, for instance, the review insured that our carbon emissions data were reported in the correct units and consistent with reporting requirements. However, Sustrana did not audit our carbon inventory, nor insure that these data were themselves accurately collected, computed and reported. Such a full quality control audit of the report is well above the scope of their review--and would be prohibitively expensive.