BREEAM

BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method), first published by the Building Research Establishment (BRE) in 1990, is the world’s longest established method of assessing, rating, and certifying the sustainability of buildings. More than 250,000 buildings have been BREEAM certified and over a million are registered for certification – many in the UK and others in more than 50 countries around the world.

BREEAM works to raise awareness amongst owners, occupiers, designers and operators of the benefits of taking a sustainability approach. It helps them to successfully and cost effectively adopt sustainable solutions, and provides market recognition of their achievements. BREEAM aims to reduce the negative effects of construction and development on the environment.

Using independent, licensed assessors, BREEAM assesses scientifically based criteria covering a range of issues in categories that evaluate energy and water use, health and wellbeing, pollution, transport, materials, waste, ecology and management processes. Buildings are rated and certified on a scale of ‘Pass’, ‘Good’, ‘Very Good’, ‘Excellent’ and ‘Outstanding’. By setting sustainability benchmarks and targets that continue to stay ahead of regulatory requirements – and by encouraging the use of innovative means of achieving these targets – BREEAM drives greater sustainability and innovation in the built environment.

Work on creating BREEAM began at the BRE (based in Watford, England, UK) in 1988, and the first version for assessing new office buildings was launched in 1990. This was followed by versions for other buildings including superstores, industrial units and existing offices.

In 1998 there was a major revamp of the BREEAM Offices standard, and the scheme’s layout, with features such as weighting for different sustainability issues, was established. The development of BREEAM then accelerated with annual updates and variations for other building types such as retail premises being introduced.

A version of BREEAM for new homes called EcoHomes was launched in 2000. This scheme was later used as the basis of the Code for Sustainable Homes, which was developed by BRE for the UK Government in 2006/7 and replaced EcoHomes in England and Wales. In 2014, the Government in England signalled the winding down the Code for Sustainable homes, since then BRE has developed the Home Quality Mark which is part of the BREEAM family of schemes.

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Wikipedia