Considered one of the longest established methods of identifying sustainability in buildings, BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) has for over 30 years played an important role in leading industry best practice and innovation.
The first version of the assessment was launched in 1990, and later this year will see the latest version of the assessment for new construction released; Version 7, to ensure that the scheme stay up to date and continues to reflect the latest science and industry thinking. The update is intended to provide investors, developers/owners, and specifiers, with assurance that they are on track with net zero targets, help contribute to ESG goals, and drive sales and rental values, and with the intension that this version will be more accessible and transparent.
The following provides a summary of the key changes from the previous version for new construction (V6).
First of all there are new additional minimum standards set for Excellent and Outstanding ratings, these include:
- Achieving Mat 01 credits for embodied carbon assessment and benchmarking
- Operational energy and carbon benchmarks and completion of predictive energy modelling under Ene 01 and Ene 02.
- Outstanding buildings will either use no refrigerants or assess refrigerant gasses (Pol 01)
Another key change is that evidence requirements are now more prescriptive. Many of the credits under previous versions stated “One or more of the appropriate evidence types listed in The BREEAM evidential requirements on page 28 can be used to demonstrate compliance with these criteria.” V7 now states clearly what documents, reports or drawings are required to show compliance. This is intended to provide greater transparency and should lead to less ambiguity for the assessor when determining whether they feel the evidence provided demonstrates the credit requirements robustly enough.
Minor alterations have been made to many of the criteria to improve clarity and ease of assessment, and some restructuring, however key changes also include:
- Hea 02 Artificial light: A new issue, restructured from the previous visual comfort issue (Hea 01), to include internal and external lighting and zoning and occupant control.
- Hea 03 Non-visual effects of light: A new issue focussed on the benefit of light supporting a healthy circadian rhythm.
- Ene 04 Low carbon design: Passive design has been separated out into building form analysis and building fabric performance and a change to the number of credits available.
- Ene 07 Flexible demand response: This is a new issue which awards credits for installed electrical building systems that have the capability to automatically modify their electricity consumption patterns in response to signals from the electricity supplier, i.e. consumption patterns that align with the availability of clean (or renewable) energy. The number of credits achieved depends upon points achieved for the number of electrical systems present and the number of these with suitable flexible demand response.
- Ene 08 Installed controls: Another new issue which rewards advanced control strategies in heating, cooling and ventilation systems, such as building management systems, air supply based on air quality sensors, etc.
- Wat 05 Prediction of operational water use: New issue requiring the calculation of operational water use, which builds upon the calculations under Wat 01 but using actual building occupancy patterns.
- Mat 01 Building life cycle assessment: Rewritten and extensive changes introduced.
Ahead of its full release later this year, a pre-release version of the technical manual has been released, our assessors are therefore able to provide you more insight on what the changes could mean to your upcoming projects, therefore, please do call us on 01865 378885 or email info@erscltd.co.uk if you’d like to discuss.