BREEAM certification provides a means of recognising and reflecting the value in higher performing assets. It also provides the ability to benchmark an asset’s performance & validate is sustainability credentials in line with the BREEAM requirements. But what does this mean in terms of an asset’s impact on key sustainability issues our society and the environment are facing today?
BREEAM certification provides value in demonstrating building performance & impact, but it also has a role to play in effectively communicating this in a way that is meaningful to asset investors, owners, users and the wider public. We must consider how we present building performance information so that we can understand it in a real-world context.
To do this, we have developed a set of three BREEAM Indicators to allow the overall certified asset performance to be interpreted in terms of the contribution made during design and construction to maximizing performance in each of the indicator theme areas.
The Indicators will be as follows:
This Indicator relates to the efficient use of physical resources in the building through careful design, construction efficiencies and durability/maintainability.
This indicator focuses on the impact of a building on its occupants and visitors.
This indicator focuses on the single issue of carbon emissions resulting from the design, construction, operation and maintenance of the building.
The BREEAM rating provides an overall picture of environmental and sustainability performance. In addition to this, the new Indicators will allow performance to be considered against specific themes that are of particular interest to users. This will give clients, designers and other BREEAM stakeholders the ability to understand and demonstrate performance against a range of global issues that are key to corporate environmental and social responsibility,
Indicator scores are based on the achievement of credits across the breadth of BREEAM relating to the theme. These credits may come from a number of assessment categories, but will all have a demonstrable and direct benefit in terms of the theme area.
The Indicators illustrate the contribution that a project is making rather than giving a quantifiable measure of performance as this is dependent on a range of factors that fall outside of the scope of BREEAM and the design and construction processes. Some criteria are more directly related to the themes than others and some will give a higher level of confidence in terms of ensuring actual benefits. For this reason, the scores take account of the level of impact that specific criteria are likely to have on actual performance. As an example, the credits within Safety and Security will have more impact on Wellbeing than on Circularity and Whole Life Carbon but will contribute to all three.
Performance is shown on a scale of 0 to 4 based on the degree to which the project has achieved the maximum contribution available through BREEAM credits. These levels are shown in the table below:
|
Percentage of maximum available score for the theme |
Indicator Rating |
|
<1% |
0 |
|
<25% |
1 |
|
≥25% |
2 |
|
≥50% |
3 |
|
≥75% |
4 |
Initially these Indicators are being piloted in the BREEAM UK New Construction 2014 and 2018 schemes and the intention will be to incorporate them into other schemes in due course. Indicator scores will start to appear at the bottom of the ‘BREEAM Rating’ report in your BREEAM UK New Construction assessment in BREEAM Projects from the 18th October 2019.
As you begin to see the indicators appear in your future UK New Construction certifications, we’d like to hear your feedback as to how these Indicators are received and used by clients and project teams. We would also welcome your thoughts on other areas where similar indicators would be of value to BREEAM stakeholders so that we can develop new and improved ways of communicating your BREEAM achievements & asset performance.
To provide feedback please contact us at [email protected] with the email titled ‘BREEAM Indicators’.