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Verification and GFA in Montgomery County

Montgomery County verification, where an in-house credential can satisfy the rule.

The county requires verification in your first compliance year and every three years after, by someone holding a Recognized Data Verifier credential. It does not have to be a third party, and an ENERGY STAR certified building can satisfy the requirement outright.

No obligation. We will tell you if you do not need us.
What the county actually requires
Cycle First year, then every 3 Verification is due in your first year of compliance and every third year after. Your date shows on the My Buildings page of the county portal.
Who may verify A Recognized Data Verifier The verifier has to hold an active credential from the county’s accepted list. In-house staff qualify if credentialed, because the county does not require a third party.
The shortcut ENERGY STAR certification A building certified for at least six months of the benchmarked year can meet the verification requirement that way instead.
What it is not No site visit, no water The county review does not cover water metrics or indoor air quality and does not require anyone to walk the building.

Dates and thresholds change. We confirm the current requirement for your specific building before anyone acts on it.

Montgomery County wrote a narrower verification rule than its neighbours.

Two things make this county unusual. The verifier does not have to be independent, so a credentialed in-house professional can sign it, and the review is deliberately narrow: energy data and building characteristics in Portfolio Manager, no water metrics, no indoor air quality, no site visit. If you have been quoted a full building assessment for a county verification, that is more than the rule asks for.

The second is the ENERGY STAR route. A building that held ENERGY STAR certification for at least six months of the calendar year being benchmarked can satisfy the verification requirement on that basis. It is the first thing we check on a high performing building, because it can remove the scope entirely.

What is not narrow is the county calendar. Since HB49 took effect on October 1, 2025, Montgomery County buildings are out of the Maryland state programme, so the three-year county cycle is the only verification clock that applies here. Do not plan a county building to the state’s five-year rule.

What we need from you
Your county portal access
The My Buildings page carries a Data Verification Due By date per building. That date, not a guess, is what we plan to.
Drawings with a scale
For the square footage half of the work. Dimension callouts and a scale bar, not a marketing floor plan.
Any ENERGY STAR history
If the building was certified, tell us early. It may satisfy the requirement without a verification at all.
The services behind this page

How verification runs here

Establish whether you owe one at all before anything gets scoped.

1
Confirm the due date
Straight from the My Buildings page in the county portal. Buildings routinely believe they are due when they are not, and the reverse.
2
Test the ENERGY STAR route
If the building was certified for six months or more of the benchmarked year, that path is usually cheaper and faster than a verification.
3
Confirm the credential
The verifier has to hold an active credential from the county’s accepted list, including the specific electives and experience criteria some of those credentials require.
4
Verify the data and the area
Portfolio Manager reviewed against source records, and gross floor area confirmed against drawings. No site visit is required for the county review.
5
File, or file for time
Submitted with the annual filing. Where a verifier is engaged and cannot finish, a documented verification delay is an accepted ground for an extension.
If verification slips

A verification year filed without verification is an incomplete filing.

The county treats verification as part of compliance in the years it is due, so the annual filing is unfinished without it. Extensions of up to thirty days beyond June 1 are available, and a documented verification delay, where you engaged a verifier and could not complete in time, is an accepted extenuating circumstance. That route only exists if you engaged someone early enough to document it.

Enforcement here runs on citations and, increasingly, court orders. The sequence never changes: cure the filing first, then engage on the enforcement. We do not quote a running penalty total, because the county’s escalation is count-based rather than a daily meter.

Received a letter?

What a county DEP document usually means.

Which document you are holding decides everything, so read the heading first.

Send us the letter
Citation
A first enforcement step under the county code. It is curable, and curing it is the whole job.
Order of Abatement or court order
A mandatory instruction to cure, not a bill. Buildings now arrive at us holding these, and the sequence is fixed: cure the filing first, then engage on the enforcement.

Send us the letter itself, not a summary. We read it for the six things that decide the response: who sent it, which building and identifier it names, what period it covers, what it says you failed to do, the cure date, and whether it is a first notice or an escalation. We never quote a running penalty total, and we cure first, then talk to the regulator.

Why verification sits with us in the county

We file in Montgomery County every cycle and we run the Green Bank work alongside it, so the funding question gets asked before the invoice does.

Credentialed
Certified Energy Manager on staff, Portfolio Manager specialists, and the credentials the verification work requires.
Actually local
We are based in the DMV and sit in the stakeholder meetings where these rules get written, not on a national help desk.
One accountable partner
We are not engineers and we do not pretend to be. We manage the process, coordinate the right vendors, and own the outcome.
Built for boards
Most of our clients are condo and co-op boards and the managers who serve them. We present in plain English, on your meeting schedule.
Owners and managers we work with
FirstService Residential Legum & Norman EJF Real Estate Services Comsource Management Barkan Management Howard University Regency Centers Montgomery County Green Bank

Verification questions

Not in Montgomery County. The county requires a Recognized Data Verifier holding an active credential from its accepted list, but it does not require that person to be independent of you, so a credentialed in-house professional can sign it. That differs from Maryland state and from most jurisdictions around us, so it is worth confirming which rule you are under.

Your first year of compliance, then every three years. The county portal shows a Data Verification Due By date for each building you have claimed, and that is the date we work to.

It can replace the verification. If the building held certification for at least six months of the calendar year being benchmarked, the county accepts that as meeting the requirement. We check this first on any high performing building.

No. Since HB49 took effect on October 1, 2025, Montgomery County buildings are exempt from the state programme and file with county DEP only. If your building is still being dual-filed, that is cleanup work and worth looking at.

No. The county review does not require a site visit and does not cover water metrics or indoor air quality. Gross floor area work is a separate exercise, and that one does sometimes benefit from measurement.

Sometimes, and we ask. The Montgomery County Green Bank technical assistance programme can connect owners with a provider and may support the cost, including gross floor area measurement and verification. It is a normal part of how we scope county work.

Keep reading

The pages that usually matter next for a Montgomery County building.

County filing Benchmarking in Montgomery County The annual filing, what is reported, and how we keep the record clean. County standard BEPS in Montgomery County The performance standard, the pathways, and what the exposure really is. Everything we do here Full services in Montgomery County Everything Honeydew manages here, compliance and energy services together.
What is BEPS? All Honeydew services Every region we serve Latest rule changes on the blog

Tell us the building and we will tell you whether you owe a verification.

Due date, the ENERGY STAR route, and what the county review actually covers. Short call.

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