Continental Contractors recently completed a six-month renovation at the Hyatt Regency Reston, Virginia, updating 518 guestrooms and suites across 12 floors, all guest corridors, and the Regency Club. The project’s success wasn’t just measured by what guests see in the newly refreshed rooms, but it was also marked by the hotel achieving LEED Silver accreditation in January 2026.

“It was a privilege to help bring the owner’s sustainability goals to completion with the support of a highly collaborative team,” said Hailey Marchyshyn, project manager for the Hyatt Regency Reston renovation. “While LEED accreditation presents significant project team coordination, it is achievable through clear communication and aligned project objectives.” 

To achieve LEED Silver, a hotel must earn 50–59 points across key categories including sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy, materials, and indoor environmental quality. In hotel renovations, that scorecard becomes real during construction, where execution and documentation move credits from “planned” to “earned.” From our 20+ years of experience, we’ve seen projects fall short not from lack of intent, but from gaps in tracking and follow-through. As COO Renee Bagshaw notes in her 2025 blog post, The Rise of LEED in Hotel Renovation Projects, designers may set the sustainable intent. But it’s the contractor, project managers, LEED consultants, and construction teams who help cement the outcome by managing credits, prerequisites, and documentation behind the scenes. 

Contractor-led contributions often include construction waste management and diversion tracking, materials transparency documentation (EPDs/HPDs), construction-phase indoor air quality protocols, commissioning support, and submittal review to ensure midstream changes don’t undercut LEED requirements. Simply put, LEED is achieved by building to the project requirements and ensuring the following are diligently managed: 

  • Tracking and documenting everything
  • Managing waste intelligently
  • Using approved materials only
  • Supporting commissioning and testing
  • Communicating early when issues arise

Intentional design and expert execution are what keep sustainability goals achievable. As Continental Contractors’ Project Executive Jared Schanbacher notes: “When sustainability is a pre-requisite, and not an afterthought, it gets ingrained into the team and the project from the kickoff.” 

The Hyatt Regency Reston renovation shows what it takes to move LEED from a goal to a verified result: steady teamwork, clear communication, and the documentation discipline that supports every credit. This kind of outcome only happens through a shared effort prioritizing early alignment, transparency when challenges arise, and follow-through to the final documentation. We’re proud to have partnered with the ownership and commissioning support team to help bring those sustainability goals across the finish line. 

View photos and renovation specifics on our Our Work page here.