BOMA BEST certification: the energy and water data your building needs before you apply

BOMA BEST is the certification most Canadian property managers meet first. It is run by BOMA Canada for existing buildings, and it assesses how a building is operated rather than how it was designed: energy, water, waste, indoor environment, purchasing, site and stakeholder engagement. The program describes itself as equipping owners, managers and operators with the tools required to optimize performance, and the program site is the authority on the current questionnaires.

Most of the questionnaire is about practices: is there a policy, is there a plan, was an assessment done. The energy and water benchmarking questions are different. They are scored on measured performance, and measured performance needs twelve or more months of complete, validated utility data per building. That is where applications stall, and it is the part of the process that a monthly review makes routine.

How BOMA BEST scores a building

The program has five levels. According to the BOMA BEST Field Guide, a building that has met the Baseline Practices and scores between 0 and 29 percent on the questionnaire is certified at Baseline; Bronze is 30 to 59 percent, Silver 60 to 79 percent, Gold 80 to 89 percent and Platinum 90 to 100 percent. Every level requires the Baseline Practices first, so a building cannot skip the fundamentals by scoring well elsewhere.

• Baseline: Baseline Practices met, 0 to 29 percent on the questionnaire.
• Bronze: 30 to 59 percent.
• Silver: 60 to 79 percent.
• Gold: 80 to 89 percent.
• Platinum: 90 to 100 percent, with on-site verification.

Because the levels are percentage bands, the difference between Silver and Gold can be a handful of questions. The energy benchmarking question is one of the larger ones, and it is also one of the few where a building cannot improve its answer by writing a better policy. It can only improve it by having better data and better performance.

The energy benchmarking question

The Field Guide's benchmarking energy use guidance for multi-unit residential buildings explains that benchmarking is based on the building's site energy use intensity, weather normalized, and that at least twelve consecutive months of energy data are required, with 24 consecutive months needed for the weather-normalized values. The program uses ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager for this, and its user manual walks applicants through sharing the building with the BOMA BEST Portfolio Manager account so the score and intensities flow into the questionnaire.

A note on the tool. In May 2025 BOMA BEST published a notice on Portfolio Manager uncertainty after proposed United States budget changes to the ENERGY STAR program. It told applicants that Portfolio Manager remained online and functional, that they should continue uploading and maintaining data, and that BOMA BEST was assessing alternative benchmarking platforms. The practical lesson is the same either way: keep the validated monthly consumption in your own system and push it to whichever benchmarking tool the program uses, rather than treating the benchmarking tool as the record.

The data checklist

Before an application, or before a recertification, the following should be true for every building in scope. This is the same checklist the monthly energy review keeps current month by month.

1. Every meter is accounted for. House meters, tenant meters where the owner has access, gas, district energy and water. A missing gas meter turns a plausible EUI into a wrong one.
2. Twelve consecutive months, preferably 24. No gaps, no estimated months left unresolved. Weather normalization needs the second year.
3. Bills reconciled with meter data. Where the utility offers Green Button, the interval data is compared with the bill totals so a mis-read or a duplicate does not enter the benchmark. See utility bill validation.
4. One calendar. Billing periods assigned to reporting months by a single rule, so the twelve months in Portfolio Manager are the same twelve months in your own reports.
5. Floor area and property use confirmed. The intensity divides by gross floor area; if the area in Portfolio Manager differs from the area in your records, the score is wrong even if the consumption is right.
6. Water on the same footing. The water benchmarking question needs the same twelve months of validated consumption.
7. Evidence filed. The bills and exports that support each number, filed per building and per year, because a verifier may ask.

Why recertification is where the work piles up

A first certification is often a project: someone collects two years of bills, builds the Portfolio Manager entries and submits. Then the project ends, the person moves on, and three years later the data is two years stale. The second application costs as much as the first.

The alternative is to treat benchmarking as an output of a process that already runs. When bills and meter data are captured, validated and assigned to reporting months every month, Portfolio Manager is updated from validated data rather than from a year-end scramble, the weather-normalized intensity is always current, and the answer to the benchmarking question is a report, not a research task. That process is what a virtual energy manager provides for portfolios that do not have a full-time energy manager.

What the monthly review adds beyond the score

Certification measures where a building is. The monthly review says why, and what to do next. Several questionnaire areas are easier to answer well when a review is in place:

• Energy assessment and planning. The review's priorities list is a living version of the action plan the questionnaire asks about. See what an energy management action plan contains.
• Monitoring. Month over month and year to date comparisons, weather-adjusted, with exceptions flagged, are the monitoring practice the program is looking for.
• Measurement and verification. Where a retrofit was done, a CUSUM view shows whether the savings are real. See weather normalization, CUSUM and RETScreen M&V.
• Water. The same validated data supports the water intensity question and flags leaks early.

FAQ

Does VE-MAP certify buildings or submit BOMA BEST applications?

No. Certification is run by BOMA Canada and the application is the owner's or manager's. VE-MAP produces the validated monthly consumption, intensities and reports that the energy and water questions rely on, and keeps Portfolio Manager in sync with them.

We only have bills, not interval data. Is that enough?

For the benchmarking questions, yes: twelve to 24 months of complete billed consumption per meter is what Portfolio Manager needs. Interval data adds a check on the bills and supports the operational findings in the review, but it is not a prerequisite.

Our buildings are mixed use. How is the area handled?

Portfolio Manager scores by property use, so a building with retail at grade and apartments above needs both uses and their areas entered. The review keeps the areas and uses on file with the meters so they are entered the same way every year. The use cases page covers multi-site and mixed portfolios.

How far ahead of an application should we start?

If the weather-normalized intensity needs 24 consecutive months, the data capture has to have been running for two years before the application. Starting the monthly review now is the only way to have that history when the next certification cycle arrives. Request a review to see where each building stands.