Mel over at Elemental posted an interesting and useful round up of BREEAM stuff. BREEAM and LEED (the US version) is certainly in the news at the moment, with both appearing to develop into specific sectors of construction. Rightly or wrongly BREAM and LEED will become central to achieving carbon neutrality and other sustainable targets in the coming years.
I am still not convinced of the benefits of these schemes over the life of a facility and contribution to the users business or organisational costs. (ie a focus on the 1, rather than the 5 or 200 from the 1:5:200 school of thinking)
My comments left in response to Mels article are copied below…would appreciate your thoughts…
…BREEAM and LEED tend to be taking off in all directions – much as the EFQM did 5 or so years ago – can this be a good thing or is it a watering down of a good original concept?
We are seeing more and more targets being set to achieve BREEAM Excellent for this or that sector, yet for the construction and fm sectors this means very little, so is ignored.
Even with the more eco aware construction organisations , their contribution to the whole process is sometimes seen as too limited, (patronising maybe?) ie around waste, transport etc, rather than making real contribution to the environmental life cycle of the facility, so again drops quickly to the bottom of the to do lists.
Fairsnape 
In terms of the 1:5:200 I’d be willing to bet that a BREEAM rated Excellent building would outperform a comparable non-rated building both in terms of reduced operational costs and occupant productivity. But at a build cost premium.
My feeling is that the forthcoming Code for Sustainable Buildings will superseed BREEAM and will put the breaks on LEED’s encroachment into the UK market for sustainability tools.
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I completely agree with IF Kite. The mainstream industry is now talking Code and not BREEAM.
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