Environmental section weightings

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Environmental section weightings

Environmental weightings are fundamental to any building environmental assessment method as they provide a means of defining, and therefore ranking, the relative impact of environmental issues. BREEAM uses an explicit weighting system derived from a combination of consensus based weightings and ranking by a panel of experts. The outputs from this exercise are then used to determine the relative value of the environmental sections used in BREEAM and their contribution to the overall BREEAM score.

This weighting system is defined in greater detail within the BRE Global Core Process Standard (BES 5301) and it’s supporting procedural documents. These form part of the over-arching BREEAM Standard and the Code for a Sustainable Built Environment. The same ranking of impacts used in BREEAM underpins the scoring mechanisms in the BRE Green Guide to Specification and the BRE Environmental Profiling Method for construction materials.

Table 5 outlines the weightings for each of the nine environmental sections included in the BREEAM UK New Construction Scheme.

Table 5 BREEAM Environmental section weightings

Environmental section	Weighting
Environmental section	Fully fitted out	Shell only	Shell and core only
Management	12%	12.5%	11%
Health and Wellbeing	15%	10%	10.5%
Energy	15%	14.5%	15%
Transport	9%	11.5%	10%
Water	7%	4%	7.5%
Materials	13.5%	17.5%	14.5%
Waste	8.5%	11%	9.5%
Land Use and Ecology	10%	13%	11%
Pollution	10%	6%	11%
Total	100%	100%	100%
Innovation (additional)	10%	10%	10%

Each of the above environmental sections consists of a differing number of assessment issues and BREEAM credits (as described below and defined in detail in the technical sections of this Scheme Document).