Sustainable Certifications: BREEAM.
BREEAM is the world’s leading science-based suite of validation and certification systems for a sustainable built environment… BREEAM is used to specify and measure the sustainability performance of buildings, ensuring that projects meet sustainability goals and continue to perform optimally over time.
BREEAM is a widely used sustainability assessment method for buildings. It evaluates various aspects of a building's environmental performance, including energy use, water efficiency, materials selection, and ecological impact, providing a comprehensive framework for assessing and improving sustainability. As sustainability becomes increasingly important in both building regulation and societal expectations, BREEAM certification can future-proof investments by ensuring compliance with evolving environmental standards, and mitigate long-term operational costs by promoting energy and resource efficiency, thereby improving the overall financial performance of the property.
So why get BREEAM certification?
Among many reasons, the sales and rent premium that BREEAM certification can provide, with Prime Central London office buildings with a BREEAM Excellent rating enjoying a 12.3% premium on rent and 10.5% premium on sales price compared to equivalent unrated buildings.
SCORING
There are two forms of BREEAM certification, BREEAM New Construction and BREEAM In Use, applied on the basis of whether the asset is new-build or existing. Under BREEAM, assets are rated from Unclassified to Outstanding, based on 9 environmental categories and levels of innovation within each. See the images for a breakdown of these categories and BREEAM scoring.
THE PROCESS
BREEAM In Use is assessed across two parts, Asset Performance and Management Performance. The Asset Performance component first takes into consideration how the building was designed and built, and then evaluates the building's systems, utility consumption, user controls, fabric, location, internal comfort and emissions to outline areas of best practice and identify opportunities for improvements. The Management Performance component is considered on the basis of the building's current operation and evaluates the building managers policies, procedures, management plans, monitoring and reporting to again outline areas of best practice and identify opportunities for operational improvements.
THE UTOPI IMPACT
For BREEAM In Use Certification, our partners at ESG Europe have identified a positive impact on 27 credits (13%) across part one and two from the Utopi product. These credits are across areas such as energy consumption data, procedure and planning for indoor air quality monitoring, noise levels, and improvement targets for energy, water and waste.
For BREEAM New Construction Certification, Utopi can create a positive impact on 5 credits, relating to energy monitoring, water monitoring and leak detection. See our next piece in this series on HQM!