calculation tools

Buildings Assessments BREEAM
1

I am reaching out to seek clarification on the compatibility of the calculation tools of our One Click LCA licence with the requirements specified by our clients.

Our client’s need is:

Use a building LCA tool that is recognised by BREEAM (as suitable for assessing core building services during Concept Design) according to the methodology.

The tools we are currently using are as follows:

  1. Whole Life Carbon Assessment (GLA / RICS / Green Mark):
  2. Whole Life Carbon Assessment (GLA / RICS / Green Mark including EN15804 +A2 data):
  3. Building Circularity (Greater London Authority):

I would appreciate it if you could verify whether these tools satisfy by BREEAM for assessing core building services during the Concept Design phase.

2

Hi Mina,

welcome to the community and thank you for your post!

There are some crucial differences between GLA/RICS and BREEAM UK:

  • With GLA/RICS, only carbon emissions are reported, whilst BREEAM UK also assesses other impact categories such as acidification, eutrophication etc.

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  • The databases of the tools differ, so you might use data that is not allowed for BREEAM UK. The difference is because 1) only A1 data is available in BREEAM UK tool whereas in GLA/RICS there are A1 & A2 data points and 2) only data which includes all environmental impact categories is available in BREEAM UK, whilst in GLA/RICS one can also find data points which only present the GWP results but don’t include other environmental impact categories necessary for BREEAM UK.

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  • The checkbox for indicating if a resource is an EPD is not available in the GLA/RICS tools, which helps achieve the Mat02 credit.

  • The results are per RICS-category and life-cycle stage, whilst in the BREEAM Tool, you see impacts per life-cycle stage as well as the values for Mat02, Mat03 and Mat06 credits.

  • GLA/RICS mandates to use the RICS default service life and using another method else results in a warning sign.

Concerning the Building Circularity (Greater London Authority) tool:
This is designed for assessing the circularity of a building (recovered/returned materials vs. virgin and disposed materials) and its cost. The result is a building circularity score, which doesn’t report on GWP, acidification, eutrophication etc.

Thus, I’d advise using our designated BREEAM UK tool. The BRE, the institute behind BREEAM UK, has confirmed our software is 100% compliant (allowing to achieve all credits) and awarded it to be the highest performing for four times in a row. Here you can book a demo where one of our experts introduces you to the tool.

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3

Hi Bernadette,

Could you please confirm that the BREEAAM UK tool is also the correct tool for undertaking LCA for BREEAM UK RFO?

Many thanks.

4

Hi Danielle,

thank you for your post!

Yes, correct, you will need to use the UK tool for UK-based credits (UK NC and UK RFO). As mentioned, the BRE approved our UK tool for UK BREEAM schemes.

Please let us know if any more questions come up.

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