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Date: 13 May 2011 Revising the BREEAM scheme Categories for this story: Feature BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment) is 21 years old. Those who have been dealing with the scheme over the past five to seven years will know that in order to keep the scheme relevant and to reward best practice, rather than standard practice, the scheme revises every two to three years.  Rather than a reinvention, each revision builds upon the last, ditching those credits which have become redundant, examining those which can be extended and bringing in new credits where technologies or working practices have innovated. The latest BREEAM 2011 will become live on 1 July 2011. In a departure to previous schemes, this version is targeting new construction only and is for UK only. Refurbishments will still be able to use BREEAM 2008 until the proposed BREEAM for refurbishments is released in the Autumn. BREEAM 2011 can also be used, but as credits such as re-use of façades has been removed, there may be a small penalty for doing so. A credit by credit examination of the changes would take up more space than I have room for here, so after a brief overview, I will instead examine what impact the changes are likely to have on various members of the construction team, namely: • client; • assessor; • design team; • contractor. The number of credits in BREEAM 2011 have been rationalised – several credits have been merged together. For example, Man 01 ‘Sustainable Procurement’ now includes a project brief credit, BREEAM AP (previously two stand alone innovation credits), a thermographic survey (new in BREEAM 2011) and commissioning and aftercare (previously covered by Man 1). So what will the main changes be for the client? Previously, there were incentives for engaging various consultants, including acousticians, BREEAM AP (accredited professional) and ecologists etc early in the process. The revisions reinforce this and credits will be lost if evidence cannot be produced that prove relevant consultants were engaged at the correct RIBA stage (typically stage C). Another change is that a registration fee will now be payable – previously there was no cost in registering a project. Full details have not yet been released for this but it will be in the region of 10% of the certification fee. Both of these changes are impacted by the route of procurement. Whilst a traditional procurement route should be able to deal with these easily, D&B or PFI procurement routes may not lend themselves as well. For example, if there are several bid teams at stage C, who registers the project and incurs the cost? For the assessor one of the main changes is that all schemes are now covered by one manual. The online document is now much easier to navigate than the previous PDF manuals and whilst it is currently available only online, a PDF version will be made available for download and offline use. In addition to mastering the detail of the credit changes, assessors will need to understand the new licensing arrangements. Again, the full details of these are yet to be finalised, but rather than having separate licences for offices, retail, schools, prisons etc, the licences are to be rationalised into four broad sector categories; commercial, public sector, multi-residential and ‘other buildings’.  The biggest change for the design team is the new approach to credit ENE 01 Reduction of CO2 emissions. This differs significantly to the previous version of BREEAM which required only the EPC score. The new approach has yet to be published in full but will advocate a more holistic, fabric first approach. An ‘Excellent’ rating will still require a mandatory six points under this credit and as a rough rule of thumb this will equate to a 25% improvement over Part L 2010 – approximately equal to Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4. The score will look at three measures: reducing CO2 emission rate; reducing energy demand, and energy consumption (i.e. energy efficiency improvements). In order to meet this standard, co-ordination between the architect and M&E engineer will need to be earlier and more collaborative. Handing a completed design over to an energy assessor to rate and adding renewables to meet a shortfall will no longer be enough – iterative designs will become much more common. For the contractor there are tweaks to what is required of them when running the site. The most promising change is the requirement under Man 03 Construction site impacts to not only log distances travelled by materials delivered to site and waste taken from site, but to report these numbers as well. Previously a commitment to record was all that was required, but by requiring the information to be submitted as part of the assessment, a body of evidence can be built up which will enable benchmarks to be set in future versions of the tool. The changes to BREEAM 2011 are a natural progression of the tool development. A period of adjustment for all involved will be required, and no doubt just as we all get comfortable with BREEAM 2011, 2013 or 2014 will be released. But that is the point – familiarity breeds complacency and to progress on our journey towards sustainability, we must constantly adjust and drive forward the agenda. www.breeam.org/BREEAM2011SchemeDocument/ www.breeam.org/filelibrary/BREEAM%202011/BREEAM_2011_FAQs.pdf Mel Starrs Associate, PRP Environmental www.melstarrs.com/elemental