Upon submitting all required paperwork and fees, the certification process takes 20 to 25 business days. During this time, a LEED evaluator will remotely work with the project design team to pore over the documentation, ask questions, and assign the corresponding point values. However, this does not include any pre-work needed to prepare documents for submission. That part of the process takes many hours and weeks by the project design team. USGBC encourages any development team interested in a LEED certification to contact them early in the process and file pre-certification paperwork long before the design phase is complete.