Building and Environment 46 (2011) 1962e1971

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Building and Environment

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/buildenv

Sustainability assessment and rating of buildings: Developing the methodology

SBToolPTeH
Ricardo Mateus*, Luís Bragança
University of Minho, Department of Civil Engineering, 4800-048 Guimarães, Portugal

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Although sustainable building is a multidimensional concept, attention to the issue often focuses solely
Received 1 October 2010 on environmental indicators, ignoring the substantial importance of social, economic and cultural
Received in revised form indicators. Building sustainability involves various relations between built, natural and social systems
18 March 2011
and therefore comprises a complex of different priorities that require consideration at each stage of
Accepted 5 April 2011
a building’s life-cycle. To cope with this complexity and to support sustainability systematic, holistic and
practical approaches to building design need to be developed. The main objective of a systematic
Keywords:
methodology is to support the development of a building design that achieves the most appropriate
Building sustainability assessment
Life-cycle
balance between the different sustainability dimensions, and is, at the same time, practical, transparent
Rating and flexible enough to be easily adapted to different types of buildings and technology.
Sustainability It is the aim of this paper to present an innovative approach for developing building sustainability
assessment and rating, and to contribute to the evolution of generic methodology and international
understanding by introducing an approach which takes the different dimensions of sustainability into
account. The scope of the methodology presented in this paper (SBToolPTeH) is to assess the sustain-
ability of existing, new and renovated residential buildings in urban areas, specifically in the Portuguese
context.
Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Due to an increasing awareness of the effects of the contempo-

Construction, including the building sector, first began to
recognize the impact of its activities on Sustainable Development in
the 1990s [1]. In the construction and real estate sector, sustain-
ability issues have global, as well as local and sectorial features. The
construction and real estate sector has a strong influence on
economies and societies, and thus is linked to global environmental
sustainability indexes, such as the ESI scores from the Universities
of Yale and Columbia which benchmark the ability of nations to
protect the environment worldwide [2]. Agenda 21 on sustainable
construction [3] emphasized the importance of proceeding with
related non-technical issues in order to successfully implement
improvement strategies. The fundamental differences between
these dimensions have been effectively identified by researchers,
for example, Ronchi et al., whose study states that “quality of life is
recognised as the non-physical and non-ecosystem counterpart of any
suitable model of sustainable development” [4].
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: ricardomateus@civil.uminho.pt (R. Mateus), braganca@civil.
uminho.pt (L. Bragança).
rary development model on climate change and the growing inter-
national movement towards high-performance/sustainable
buildings, the current paradigm of building is changing rapidly. Such
change is affecting both the nature of the built environment as well
the actual method of designing and constructing a facility. This
newly emerging approach differs from established practice in the
following important ways: by selecting project team members on
the basis of their eco-efficient and sustainable building expertise;
increased collaboration among the project team members and other
stakeholders; greater focus on global building performance than on
building systems; a strong emphasis on environmental protection
for the whole life-cycle of a building; careful consideration of worker
health and occupant health and comfort throughout all phases;
scrutiny of all decisions for their resource and life-cycle implica-
tions; the added requirement of building commissioning, and a real
emphasis on reducing construction and demolition waste [5].
A building project can be regarded as sustainable only when all
the different dimensions of sustainability e environmental,
economic, social and cultural e are taken into account. The various
issues of sustainability are interrelated, and the interaction of
a building with its surroundings has important ramifications.
Common concerns include those of reducing the use of non-

0360-1323/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2011.04.023