This guide is for LCA in compliance with BREEAM International 2013/2015/2016 as well as BREEAM-NOR 2016, BREEAM España and BREEAM UK RFO 2014 for Mat 01 Life cycle impacts. The LCA allows achieving full 100 % of the potential score in the Mat 01 calculator (including exemplary credit) in all the above schemes.
If you are working with BREEAM UK project please note that the tool you have chosen and the guidance here only apply to using One Click LCA for BREEAM UK Retrofit and fit-out. Please choose our IMPACT Compliant or IMPACT Equivalent tool for UK New construction and check out the guidance for that here.
The idea of the Mat 01 credit is to perform a high-quality LCA analysis. In other words, the better the estimated quality of the analysis the more credits you’ll be able to achieve. The quality and credit potential are defined by two factors: the quality of the LCA tool and the assessment scope, which means the scope of different building elements included to calculation. The quality of the LCA tool defines 70 % of the credit potential and the element scope of the remaining 30 %. One Click LCA has been approved for the highest potential quality rating so by choosing the tool you have already earned 70 % of the credit potential.
Follow these easy steps to calculate LCA credits for your BREEAM scheme
Create a new design.
Download your scheme specific Mat 01 calculator from the BRE Extranet to choose the scope of the materials included in the calculation (scheme-specific). In the calculator choose the tab for One Click LCA. The left side of the calculator contains the tool quality evaluation which is pre-filled. On the right side, you’ll have the material elements. Some of them are mandatory, the rest can be chosen. Use the calculator to find the best calculation scope for your project interest, available data, and the credit target.
Fill in the construction materials query either manually or by import. Unless wastage factors are defined, use gross quantities (amounts of material installed in the building). Include the structures based on which Mat 01 elements you choose to include to your project. Also define Mat 01 element and name in the field comment for each data row to enable reporting. In case some of the mandatory elements are not applicable to your project, add some material rows with empty quantity, the Mat 01 element, and comment 'Not applicable'.
Once the correct materials and quantities are provided, set the transportation distances and transport methods for the materials, or choose the most suitable default transport methods from the project main page’s 'Defaults' select.
Check the material service life information. In BREEAM the service life of building is estimated to be 60 years. Any material that has a lower service life will have to be replaced. One Click LCA provides default values for all of the data sets but users have the possibility to set a more specific value.
Fill in the annual energy consumption in the energy questionnaire by choosing the local energy data and inputting annual consumption based on your energy calculations. Only the energy bought from external sources will be reported. Any renewable energy produced in the building will be considered zero.
Fill in the annual water consumption in the water questionnaire. If you do not have local water treatment system choose “Clean + waste water” and fill in cubic meters. You are allowed to use an estimate if the water consumption is not modelled.
Add your site impacts in their own questionnaire. For these you can either choose a suitable construction site scenario OR give project specific energy and water consumption and waste generation. Fill in either question 1 or questions 2-5.
Fill in the local compensation questionnaire. In case you have only used local, internally consistent data like INIES in France, IBU or OEKOBAU.dat in Germany, BRE in UK or EPD Norge in Norway, specify your data source and area where it is applicable. In case you have also used data from other sources or any of the above mentioned data sources are not applicable for your building area, select the country of the building. In this case the building location will be used to compensate all the datasets to match the typical manufacturing conditions of the building location.
If you have not selected LCA data with a consistent methodology, you need to mark “N” to the section in the BREEAM Mat 01 calculator (2016 version only) to the question “Are all assessed to the same publically available AND peer reviewed methodology/PCR that is compliant with ISO 21930 or EN 15804.”
If you have not selected LCA data from a single region, or used the local compensation feature, you need to mark “N” to the BREEAM Mat 01 calculator (2016 version only) to the question “Using local LCA data or LCA data that has been compensated to a comprehensive range of regional differences*”
Open the Results page and check the results.
Choose the “More actions” button and download the detailed report to Excel. This will be the report you’ll send to BRE.
Submit the documentation including the detailed report and your Mat 01 calculator that you can get from BRE Extranet.
Showing how LCA has benefited the building for RFO projects
In some RFO schemes BRE also asks the calculator to provide evidence how LCA has benefited the building. For more information check our reporting guidance.
Watch the tutorial video
VIDEO QUALITY: to improve resolution once video is playing, open the Settings (gear icon), Quality and from there choose HD, or the highest available resolution.
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