IGBC Rating Levels, and Why We Print None Beside Our Own Project

Ask what an IGBC rating level means and you will usually be handed the ladder — a base rung, then Silver, Gold, Platinum — as though the answer were the vocabulary. The vocabulary is the easy part. What matters is how a project gets onto a rung, what the rung does and does not describe, and why a level printed in an advertisement is one of the least informative sentences in Indian property marketing.

How a points-based scale works

A rating system is a published catalogue of credits. Each credit describes something a project can do — a water-efficiency measure, a daylight strategy, a materials decision — and carries a number of points. A project's submission claims the credits it believes it has earned, IGBC assesses the claim, and the points that survive assessment are added up. Thresholds in the system map that total onto a named rung.

A threshold is a floor, not a description. A project that clears one by a single point and a project that clears it comfortably sit on the same rung and are described by the same word.

The credit categories a residential submission is scored across

IGBC's residential system groups its credits into families, and the families are worth knowing because they tell you what the system is actually looking at.

• Site planning — what happens to the land: soft area retained, runoff and soil handled during construction, heat and walkability at ground level.
• Water conservation — fixture efficiency, rainwater capture and recharge, treatment and reuse of wastewater, and metering.
• Energy efficiency — envelope and glazing, daylight, the efficiency of common-area systems, and on-site generation.
• Materials and waste — sourcing, recycled and regional content, and how construction and household waste is handled.
• Indoor environmental quality — daylight and ventilation reaching the homes, low-emission finishes, acoustic and thermal comfort.

Alongside these, systems typically carry credits for innovation and for having qualified professionals involved in the process.

Mandatory requirements versus optional credits

This is the distinction that explains why two projects on the same rung can feel so different.

Every family contains mandatory requirements — things a project has to do simply to be eligible, earning no points for doing them. Above that floor sit optional credits, and a project chooses which to pursue based on its site, its budget, its structural system and, frankly, which ones are cheapest to document.

Two projects can therefore reach the same total by opposite routes: one loading up on water and materials credits, another on energy and indoor quality. Both are honestly described by the same rung. Only one of them may have done the thing you personally care about.

Design-stage points and construction-stage points are not the same points

Some credits can be demonstrated from drawings, specifications and calculations. Others cannot be demonstrated until the building exists — the actual materials procured, the systems as commissioned, the tests run on the completed building.

That is the structural reason a design-stage assessment and a final certification are different awards rather than two stages of one. The design assessment establishes that a described building would score in a particular way. The final award establishes what the built building scored. Between them lie procurement, substitution and value engineering, none of which the first assessment could see.

Why a level in an advertisement is not evidence

Because the advertisement does not tell you where the level came from. A rung printed on a hoarding for a building under construction has one of three origins, and they are not equivalent.

• An issued award. Fine — and there is a letter, and a directory entry, and a date.
• A target. The level the project is aiming at. Legitimate as an ambition and misleading when written in the grammar of an achievement.
• Nothing in particular. A rung chosen because it reads well. Nothing to check, nothing to disprove until handover.

All three look identical in a headline, which is precisely why the level is the wrong thing to look at and the letter is the right one.

How to ask for the letter, and what it should say

The request is unremarkable and should be treated as such: "may I see the IGBC letter for this project?" What comes back should name the issuing body, the rating system and version, the project, the applicant entity, the stage of the award, the date — and, if a level has been awarded, the level.

Then run the second check. Look the project up in IGBC's own listing on igbc.in, searching on the applicant name from the letter rather than on the marketing brand, because the two frequently differ. A letter and a directory entry that agree with the name on your agreement is a verified claim. Anything short of that is a conversation you should have before you book, not after.

What a level would still not tell you

Even a correctly issued, verifiable, high rung leaves three questions open, and they are the ones that determine what living there is like.

1. Which credits produced it? The total conceals the route. Ask which families the points came from.
2. Which of those features are in your agreement? A credit earned in a submission is not a term you can enforce. The specification annexure is.
3. Who runs the systems afterwards? A treatment plant, a recharge network and an irrigation system are operated, not merely installed, and the rating says nothing about the maintenance contract.

Our own position, and what our data records

SUYUG records a design-stage IGBC pre-certification for both of its apartment projects at Sompura Gate, THE1 and Saffron. No SUYUG project holds a final IGBC certificate. And no rating level is published for either project — not because we are being coy, but because a level is decided at final certification and IGBC has issued none.

The field in this site's data layer that records a project's IGBC standing accepts exactly two values, pre-certified and designed to the guidelines. There is no member for "certified" and none for a level, so the stronger sentence cannot be typed into a page here without someone deliberately changing the code that describes it. Publishing the absence of a level is a weaker line than a competitor's Platinum. It is also the only one of the two a buyer can check, which is the trade we would rather make.

The full green position is on our sustainability page, and each project's registration, promoter name and regulator — the other claim on this site written to be verified rather than believed — is transcribed on our registrations page.