The term BREEAM is one that I’ve come across in various contexts over the course of this project and thought I’d better find out what it means…
BREEAM is a widely used environmental assessment method for buildings. The assessments are carried out by qualified practitioners. For many types of development, assessments are a prerequisite.
Through application of the method buildings are assessed against a set of criteria and given an overall score which will fall within a banding, this then provides a rating of: PASS, GOOD, VERY GOOD or EXCELLENT. Certain minimum standards are set – for example, the Welsh Development Agency requires that all buildings constructed on land sold by them must achieve a minimum VERY GOOD rating.
The method is applicable to most types of building, with bespoke versions of the method available for large non-standard buildings like prisons and schools & for non U.K. buildings etc.
Pre-assessment estimators are available for you to see the depths to which the assessment goes. Probably of most relevance for us is the Ecohomes pre-assessment estimator. From this you can see that a wide range of criteria are used to assess the building – from CO2 emissions to sound insulation and the amounts of daylight.
Note that …
In April 2007 the Code for Sustainable Homes replaced Ecohomes for the assessment of new housing in England.
More on the Code for Sustainable Homes here.
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