Building sustainability assessment methods

Over last 15 years it has been increasingly important to understand the sustainability performance of buildings across a broad range of considerations. This has stimulated the development of a number of sustainability assessment tools intended to measure objectively a project's impact in sustainability terms and so encourage designers and planners to improve a building's performance. This paper examines the nature and contribution, as well as the limitations, of current sustainability rating assessment tools in evaluating building sustainability in different countries. Two yardsticks are used to review the current tools: first, how well they relate to the goal of sustainable development, and second, how adequately they adhere to the principles of objective assessment. Scope for further development of sustainability assessment tools is identified – in particular, the need for tools to assess more adequately how buildings provide well-being, and to expand how assessment systems capture qualitative information. The paper proposes that methodology and procedures of assessment methods should feature the broad participation of user groups drawn from the public. This paper was first published in the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Engineering Sustainability and is reproduced with their permission http://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/content/journals Permission is granted by ICE Publishing to print one copy for personal use. Any other use of these PDF files is subject to reprint fees.</p

Systematising multidisciplinary sustainable building design processes utilising BIM

Purpose – Sustainability considerations are often treated as an add-on to building design, following ad-hoc processes for their implementation. The purpose of this study was to investigate, model, and facilitate the early stages of Building Information Modelling (BIM) enabled Sustainable Building Design (SBD) by formalising the ad-hoc working relationships of the best practices in order to standardise the optimal collaboration workflows. Design/methodology/approach – Four stages of data collection were conducted, including a total of 32 semistructured interviews with industry experts from 17 organisations. Fourteen “best practice” case studies were identified, and roles and responsibilities, resources, information exchanges, interdependencies, timing and sequence of events, and critical decisions were examined. Findings – The research classified the critical components of SBD into a framework utilising content and thematic analyses. These components were coordinated explicitly into a systematic process, which followed Concurrent Engineering (CE) principles utilising Integrated DEFinition (IDEF) 3 structured diagramming technique. Then, Green BIM Box (GBB) workflow management prototype tool was developed to analyse communication and delivery of BIM-enabled SBD in a centralised system. Originality/value – This study represents an improvement to previous attempts to systematically define the BIM-enabled SBD process for the early stages. The results support the idea that a transparent SBD process, which follows specified communication patterns, can assist in achieving sustainability efficiently in terms of time, cost, and effort