BREEAM UK NC 2018 LCA credits

A handy guide to LCA and LCC credits in BREEAM UK NC 2018

BREEAM UK NC 2018 is now live, and it constitutes a big change especially for what concerns the Life Cycle-related credits. The Green Guide is dead, long live LCA!

For any construction specialists working with BREEAM UK, the rolling out of the new schemes has caused much stress and credits-induced panic, but we hope our guide will help you make sense of the BREEAM guidelines and embrace the change.

First of all, what do we talk about when we talk about Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing credits?

Material credits supported by One Click LCA: LCA, EPDs, and more

These credits aim at reducing the environmental and social impacts of products used in the construction phase, and they follow a life-cycle based approach.

Mat 01 Environmental impacts from construction products – Building life cycle assessment (LCA)

Worth up to 7+3 credits

The goal of this credit is to reduce buildings’ environmental life cycle impacts through conducting Life Cycle Assessment and integrating its outcomes in the design decision-making process.

Mat 02 Environmental impacts from construction products -Environmental Product Declarations (EPD)

Worth 1 credit

The goal of this credit is to encourage the availability of robust and comparable data on the impacts of construction products by
rewarding the specification of products with environmental products declarations

Mat 06 Material efficiency Assessment scope

Worth 1 credit

The goal of this credit is to encourage the reduction of environmental impacts through optimizing the use of materials during all stages of the project.

This version of BREEAM UK has decided to emphasize the weight given to Life Cycle Assessment, which means that the credit potential for Mat 01 LCA is 10 credits. This is a welcome change, as Building Life Cycle Assessment is a reliable method to assess the sustainability of a building through its whole life-cycle, from the extraction of materials to demolition and disposal. If you want to learn more about the Life Cycle Assessment methodology and how it applies to the construction sector, you can find an in-depth guide here.

Moreover, this new version of BREEAM UK encourages designers and builders to select products with an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). EPDs are a great way to learn about the product’s carbon footprint and other environmental impacts. You can learn more about them by reading our guide here.

LCC credits

Man 02 Life cycle cost and service life planning

Worth up 4 credits

The goal of the credit is to promote the business case for sustainable buildings through the enhanced understanding of capital cost and to improve design, specification, maintenance and operation, by encouraging the use of life-cycle costing.

Curious about the benefits of Life Cycle Costing? You can read our guide here.

How to calculate LCA for BREEAM UK NC 2018

In addition to the BREEAM simplified LCA tool, you can calculate the LCA with an approved Building LCA tool. If you only use the BREEAM simplified tool, you will not be able to achieve all the potential credits.

These are the steps required by BREEAM:

1. Identify the elements that form the building and are in scope
2. Calculate the LCA with a building LCA tool that is recognized by BREEAM (see The Mat 01/02 Results Submission Tool)
3. Get the LCA results for the building for the in-scope elements and enter them in the Mat 01/02 Results Submission Tool. In addition to this, enter further information required by the tool including (but not necessarily limited to) construction and product descriptions, quantities, service lives, transportation distances, classifications and justification for design decisions
4. Get the credit award building from the Mat 01/02 Results Submission Tool

IMPACT equivalent or IMPACT compliant

One Click LCA has both an IMPACT equivalent and an IMPACT compliant option. You can use either for BREEAM UK NC 2018.

The Impact compliant tool uses the IMPACT database, which is an average UK construction material database licensed by BRE. To enable the IMPACT-compliant module, you need purchase the IMPACT database license.

The IMPACT equivalent tool uses manufacturer specific environmental product declaration (EPD) data from manufacturers who have published their data in BRE EPD system or with some other EPD publisher. There are also differences in the scope of the analysis.

The IMPACT compliant tool calculates all 24 environmental indicators according to EN standards, while the IMPACT equivalent tool focuses on carbon footprint. Both of them are verified for compliancy and both can be used for BREEAM UK NC 2018.

BREEAM UK NC 2018 credits with One Click LCA and IESVE

Did you know that One Click LCA has partnered with IES? One Click LCA has replaced the IESVE Impact suite and now IES users can seamlessly import their model into One Click LCA for LCA and LCC calculations. Together, One Click LCA and IESVE can deliver over 50 credits for BREEAM UK NC 2018, you can read more about the integration here.

	ONE CLICK LCA + IESVE
	Credit potential	Mat 01	Mat 02	Mat 03	Mat 05	Mat 06	Man 02	Man 03	Wst 05	Man 01	Man 05	Wst 06	Hea 01	Hea 04	Ene 01	Ene 02	Ene 04	Ene 08
BREEAM UK NC 2018	52	7+3	1	3+1	1	1	4	2	1+1	2	2	1	3	2	13	1	1	2

What’s new in BREEAM UK NC 2018 – free webinar

If you are interested in learning more about the changes in BREEAM UK NC 2018 you can sign up to watch a free recorded webinar here.

You will learn how to achieve 10 Mat 01 LCA credits with One Click LCA, how to deliver and report Mat 01 LCA and Man 02 LCC in practice, and how to automate LCA and LCC with IES, Revit, and more.

Any other questions? Contact us at sales@oneclicklca.com or open the Livechat window and we will be happy to answer them.

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