I’m all for the whole systems thinking. There’s not enough of that going on: http://www.greenspec.co.uk/html/opinion/wholesystem.html
To paraphrase Amory Lovins “You don’t just need a good recipe you need a great cook that can combine all the right ingredients in the right proportions and the appropriate order….. So, how do you make elephant and rabbit stew? One elephant and one rabbit?”

- To confirm if a sustainable building is what the Client actually wants or if the are they being forced into the process by outside factors such as planning authorities and funding bodies?

BREEAM is often specified as part of planning or funding these days. Blue chip clients will also specify it for offices particularly as a way of differentiating their offer from the competition.

- To ascertain, roughly, who much additional costs does the implementation of BREEAM place on a construction project?

BRE published some research a few years back called “Putting a price on sustainability”. Roughly between nothing and 7% capex depending on location, building type and what level you are trying to achieve.

- Does the “Green Guide to Construction” interlace with BREEAM and modern building techniques?

The green guide is a tool to determine some of the materials credits in BREEAM. It’s presence in a voluntary tool is fair enough, but acquires a quasi legal status when BREEAM and the Code for Sustainable Homes in particular is a planning or other legal requirement. By implication to achieve any code rating you must use the Green guide as it is a mandatory credit and there is no alternative to it currently offered or available.

- To establish if there is a correlation between the installations of highly technical equipment and an increase in construction site accidents due to an aging workforce.

Don’t think so, at least not in our experience…

I am an MSc Student preparing to write a Dissertation on “BREEAM is it worth it and does its careful design and implementation help or
hinder the construction process” I have found reference to your BREAM on your website and was wondering if you still had the same thought and whether or not you cuold share some of them with me in relation to my dissertion outlined below,I would be most grateful for your thoughts and ides.

The Proposed Project:

The author is a consultant working for a University, managing an Enhanced Health and Safety/Construction Design and Management (CDM) Service. The University have a large scale building and refurbishment programme where one of their key objectives is to achieve an excellent rating on the British Research Establishments Environmental Assessment Model (BREEAM) for new builds and very good for refurbishments. As the CDM Co-ordinator (CDMC) the author has coordinated the design and construction of numerous multimillion pound projects where BREEAM has been successfully implemented. However in the opinion of others on the design team, it has been very difficult to achieve the required points.

It is the author’s opinion that the Clients desire for a sustainable property portfolio is driven by pressure from higher education funding bodies such as HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) who, prior to the release of funds will scrutinise the applicant for its green credentials.

The principle behind this paper is to ascertain if effective design and planning actually improves sustainability, safety and quality on projects or is the client being driven by public perception and corporate and social responsibilities and ultimately paying a high price for a building they cannot effectively manage!

Provisional Overall aim of the Project:

The overall aim of the project is to establish if implementing BREEAM is actually worth the time, money and whether design and execution of sustainable building techniques helps or hinders the construction process.

Specific Research Objectives:

The aim of the following objectives will assist in either proving or disproving if the provisional aim of the project is true or false. It is envisaged that the objectives listed below will be translated into questions for use within the questionnaire.

- To confirm if a sustainable building is what the Client actually wants or if the are they being forced into the process by outside factors such as planning authorities and funding bodies?

- To ascertain, roughly, who much additional costs does the implementation of BREEAM place on a construction project?

- Does the “Green Guide to Construction” interlace with BREEAM and modern building techniques?

- To establish if there is a correlation between the installations of highly technical equipment and an increase in construction site accidents due to an aging workforce.

As previously mentioned your assistance on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards

Anthony Heaton-Jones

I’ve just been on the new BREEAM in use course. It is interesting in that it takes quite a different approach to the other BREEAM methods. Particularly in that it is a self assessment with an audit accepting evidence that would stand up in court (so called M’Lud evidence) and what a reasonable person might accept. Also the certification is by the auditor rather than the BRE themselves.

The slightly strange/difficult thing is due the intellectual property concerns the scoring methodology is hidden, which makes it difficult to understand how to improve the score to gain a particular rating.

Maybe this is how future version of design/procurement BREEAMs will develop in future?

BREEAM was originally developed at a time when the level understanding about the key built environment impacts was poor (or non-existent) –over the past 15 years it has been phenomenally successful in raising awareness of the key issues.

However, clients, designers and specifiers are much more informed and sophisticated now. In my view, the focus (obsession!) on a narrow set of environmental impacts is obscuring the really important objective of delivering genuine sustainability (yes, sorry about the use of the “S” word!) –I recently visited a school which had achieved a BREEAM Excellent rating and had won various awards for its energy performance. However, the acoustic environment in the school was so bad, that the teaching and learning outcomes were severely compromised. Is this a sustainable school? I don’t think so!

In my view we need to move beyond tools and methodologies like BREEAM and LEED and adopt a “Whole system” approach to design – this is a completely different way of approaching and resolving the complex (and sometimes conflicting) challenges associated with delivering genuine sustainability. What’s required is a deep understanding that the problems are systemic and as such need to be addressed in this way. It’s about looking for the synergistic solutions that address and resolve multiple problems and issues simultaneously. It’s also about working within the constraints imposed by natural systems as much as working with them -this approach delivers huge social, human and environmental benefits. It also allows us to tunnel through cost barriers in a way which identifies and delivers economic advantage (i.e.by doing more with less), in a way which “ticking the boxes” and getting a BREEAM/CSH rating could never do.

If the Gaia hypothesis taught us anything it should be to consider the whole not just the parts! Otherwise we will end up with utterly perverse outcomes such as millions of new homes achieving (in theory!) Code Level 3+ by installing technological bolt-on’s, but not even considering the dire environmental, social and human consequences of summer-time over-heating and/or inadequate ventilation!

A whole system approach is very much what we are trying to achieve at Inbuilt (see http://www.inbuilt.co.uk ) and will the theme of my talk at Ecobuild this year –if anyone has any more examples of perverse outcomes resulting from adopting BREEAM/LEED (or the CSH), I would be delighted to hear about them.