John, you army guy you...

I suggest that you embrace the art part and get good at the science. Your
model will be just as good as your input. Whats that old saw? When you point
the finger you have 3 others pointing back at you. While some modeling tools
might be close to beta and hard to use, eQUEST isn't one of them. Each new
version has bugs, but those are relatively few and are fixed quickly. You
use energy modeling to predict the energy use and energy cost of a baseline
and proposed buildings. Here in Oregon we actually do follow-up and make
sure the predicted came close to the actual. We call it model verification.
I would recommend that you spend more time learning the art, gathering the
info, creating an actual weather file if the typical one's aren't good
enough for you, and very carefully inputting the data into your modeling
tool of choice. I'd be happy to offer you peer review services if you ever
want to make sure your work is accurate.

Best,
Carol

PS I resent the heck out of LEED paperwork and am afraid they are rulemaking
creativity out of buildings. I've seen it happen over, and over, and
over.....