The 2005 World Sustainable Building Conference,

04-048 Tokyo, 27-29 September 2005 (SB05Tokyo)

BUILDING ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT METHODS: REDEFINING INTENTIONS

1
Raymond J COLE, Ph.D

1
School of Architecture, University of British Columbia, 6333 Memorial Road, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2,
Canada, raycole@arch.ubc.ca

Keywords: Buildings, Assessment, Green, Sustainable Development, Sustainability, Future

Summary
The objective of this paper is to compare and contrast the initial intentions and emphasis of building
environmental performance assessment methods with their emerging roles. This analysis provides a starting
point for anticipating future developments in “building” environmental assessment tools, how are they likely
to evolve, how they will be used and how they will dovetail with other change instruments. More importantly,
the increasing framing of environmental issues within the wider context of sustainability raises the question
as to whether existing tools are capable of being easily reconfigured to fulfill this new agenda. The paper
draws on differences between “sustainable development” and “sustainability” to reframe the discussion of
performance assessment methods. In particular, reconciling their role as “assessment” and “market
transformation tools,” the extent and ways they may expose relationships between environmental, social and
economic considerations and enable synergistic links to be discovered, and their role in enhancing dialogue
among a broader range of stakeholders than the design team.

1. Introduction
The field of building environmental assessment has matured remarkably quickly since the introduction of
BREEAM in 1990, and the interim period has witnessed a rapid increase in the number of building
environmental assessment methods either in use or being developed worldwide. There is little doubt that
building environmental assessment methods have contributed enormously to furthering the promotion of
higher environmental expectations, and are directly and indirectly influencing the performance of buildings.
Widespread awareness of assessment methods rather than the actual number of assessed buildings has
created the critical mass of interest necessary to cement their role in creating positive change. This early
success largely derives from their ability to offer a recognizable structure for environmental issues and, more
importantly, to provide a focus for the debate of building environmental performance. This momentum will
likely increase over the next few years, and current systems will continue to evolve in terms of refining
performance indicators, measures and benchmark and the level of complexity attainable within acceptable
costs. Similarly, the organizational setting within which the methods are administered will respond to
concerns over the costs of making an assessment by streamlining the certification process and the
necessary support documentation.
It is reasonable to argue that the context in which building environmental assessment methods now operate,
and the roles that they are increasingly playing, are qualitatively different than earlier expectations.
Moreover, a shift in emphasis toward sustainability will further transform the structural and operational
requirements of such tools. The objectives of this paper are first to compare and contrast the initial intentions
and emphasis of building environmental performance assessment methods with their current and emerging
roles. This analysis provides a starting point for anticipating future developments in “building” environmental
assessment tools, how are they likely to evolve, how will they be used and how will they dovetail with other
change instruments (regulations, codes, incentives). Secondly, and more importantly, the increasing framing
of environmental issues within the wider context of sustainability raises the question as to whether existing
tools are capable of being easily reconfigured to fulfill this broader agenda.
Throughout the paper, a distinction is made between assessment tools as “products” and “process.” The
notion of product covers all those aspects of assessment methods related to scope of performance issues,
including the way they are structured, scored and communicated. These technical characteristics are largely
dictated by the authors of the assessment scheme and currently represent the major focus of discussion.
Process, by contrast, covers a host of issues related to their use including the maintenance and
development of the assessment system and, in particular, to its deployment by the design team and the
engagement of other stakeholders as the basis for making informed decisions. The distinction between
product and process enables the paper to re-emphasize that developing assessment tools is only a means

- 1934 -
 The 2005 World Sustainable Building Conference,
Tokyo, 27-29 September 2005 (SB05Tokyo)

to an end and not an end in itself, and to avoid much of the current focus on continued refinement and
comparison of the technical characteristics of methods rather than the equally significant issues of the
context in which they operate, how they are being applied and their potency to respond to new agendas.

2. Initial Intentions & Roles

The majority of existing building environmental assessment methods evaluate “green” performance and are
classified here as “first generation” systems. This generation of assessment methods:
• Are technically framed and emphasize the assessment of resource use, loadings and health & comfort
issues in individual buildings.
• Assess performance relative to explicitly declared or implicit benchmarks and, as such, measure the extent
of improvement rather than how close to a defined desired goal.
• Assess design intentions and potential as determined through prediction rather than actual real-world
performance.
• Structure performance scoring as a simple additive process and use explicitly declared or implicit
weightings to denote priority.
They were initially conceived, and still largely function, as voluntary, market place mechanisms by which
owners striving for improved performance would have an objective basis for communicating their efforts. An
often-stated role and expectation is that the widespread adoption of assessment methods could ultimately
transform the market in its expectation and demand for buildings with higher environmental performance.
Building environmental assessment is now a distinct and important realm of research and inquiry that:
• Seeks to develop greater refinement and rigour in performance indicators, weighting protocols and the
potential incorporation of LCA approaches to refine the constituent requirements.
• Has provided numerous side-by-side comparisons of the more notable tools (e.g., BREEAM, LEED® and
GBTool) to illustrate points of convergence and distinction, typically as a starting point for generating
applicable methods in other regions or countries. Within this debate, the scope of comparison and analysis
is typically only based on technical content, and makes no reference to the organizational and market
context that the methods operate. This is a serious omission since the context in which an assessment
rd
method has been designed to operate within (e.g., cost of the assessment; whether there is 3 party
certification etc.) profoundly affects the permissible scope, emphasis and rigour of an assessment.

2.1 Changing the emphasis

There are several emerging issues that increasingly frame the current use of building assessment methods:
• Assessment methods have moved beyond voluntary market place tools. Performance thresholds in the
assessment methods (e.g., LEED® Silver) are increasingly being specified by organizations and public
agencies as performance requirements and are being considered as potentially part of development
approval/bonus concessions.
• The range of building types seeking certification is increasing and this, in turn, is creating the need to
either develop generic systems that can recognize distinctions on an as-need basis for specific situations,
or create a suite of related tools each of which uniquely addresses a particular building type.
• The need to permit their easy access and to enable an assessment to be made quickly and cheaply, is
spurring the increased deployment of Web-based tools (e.g., ABCplanner (Denmark) and PromisE
(Finland)) or attendant software support tools (e.g., Calculator and Letter Templates within LEED® (US)).
• The aggregate affect of individual buildings has enormous consequence for community infrastructure
design and operation. This, together with the inherent limitation of analyzing individual buildings as the
basis to establish environmental priorities, has generated interest in creating and linking assessment tools
across a variety of scales.
• Similar to the necessity and value of developing standardized Life-Cycle Assessment protocols for building
materials and products, i.e., standardized protocols for establishing boundary conditions, data quality etc.,
there is increased activity in defining standardized requirements for building assessment methods (e.g.,
ISO TG59/SC17: Building Construction/Sustainability in Building Construction.)
• The initial concerns regarding the extent to which assessment methods support or constrain design-
innovation persists, but has not proven sufficiently potent to significantly affect their structure or emphasis.
Since environmental assessment methods present an organized set of selected environmental criteria, by
default they communicate to building owners and design teams what are understood as being the most

- 1935 -
 The 2005 World Sustainable Building Conference,
Tokyo, 27-29 September 2005 (SB05Tokyo)

significant environmental considerations. As such existing assessment methods are used as design tools,
even though they were not specifically designed to do so. This raises a conflict in the role assessment
tools. On the one hand they may potentially institutionalize a limited definition of environmentally
responsible building practice at a time when exploration and innovation should be encouraged. As such,
building owners may commit their designer’s to achieving a high performance score on specific
assessment method resulting in “points-chasing” as an unfortunate, but understandable, consequence. By
contrast, assessment tools offer some degree of clarity and definition as to what constitutes a green
building to which, even though they may not necessarily agree, all stakeholders can at least acknowledge.

2.2 Assessment Tools in Developing Countries

The first generation of assessment tools originated in developed countries. However, with increased
international interest, the cross-cultural transferability of assessment methods is of particular importance to
those in developing countries. Since developing countries are confronted with pressing social and economic
concerns, their domestic constraints on environmental progress are therefore qualitatively different from
those in developed countries. Gibberd (2002), for example, contrasts the emphasis of developed and
developing countries. Whereas the former have been concerned with maintaining standards of living while
reducing resource depletion and environmental damage, he argues that the average standard of living in
developing countries is far lower than in developed countries and in many cases basic human needs are not
being met. Here, Gibberd suggests the emphasis should therefore be on development that aims to address
these basic needs while avoiding negative environmental impacts. Whereas some environmental criteria
related to resource use and loadings can be readily reconfigured to acknowledge different regional and
geographical contexts, many others cannot. All assessment tools carry the values and priorities of their
authors, either implicitly or explicitly, and importing them from one circumstance to another or, indeed,
developing a standardized universally applicable method, is now recognized as problematic. This will
become increasing more acute as and when the range of considerations is expanded to address social and
economic aspects of sustainability (Cooper, 1999).

2.3 Signs of Change

Several recent assessment tools – the Japanese Comprehensive Assessment Scheme for Building
Environmental Efficiency (CASBEE); the South African Sustainable Building Assessment Tool (SBAT);
®
Arup’s Sustainable Project Appraisal Routine (SPeAR ); and the proposed Hong Kong Comprehensive
Environmental Performance Assessment Scheme (CEPAS) – show structural features that differentiate them
from the first generation of tools. Although they still employ several of the scoring characteristics of earlier
systems, they collectively suggest a transition towards a generation of tools that may enable assessment of
the extent to which buildings can contribute to supporting sustainable patterns of living:
• CASBEE, while employing an additive/weighting approach, breaks away from the simple addition of points
achieved in all performance areas to derive an overall building score, which has been the dominant feature
of all previous methods. It distinguishes between the Environmental Loading (resource use and ecological
loadings) and Environmental Quality and Performance (indoor environmental quality and amenities)
scoring them separately to determine the Building Environmental Efficiency, i.e., the ratio of Environmental
Quality and Performance to Environmental Loading. Conceptually, therefore, building assessment is not
presented as a representation of the environmental characteristics of a building as a “product”, but rather
as a measure of the environmental implications associated with providing a set of “services.”
• CEPAS, again while employing an additive/weighting approach, introduces and organizes performance
criteria that make a clear distinction between “human” and “physical” performance issues as well as
“building” and their “surroundings.” This manifests as eight performance categories: Resource Use;
Loadings; Site Impacts; Neighbourhood Impacts; Indoor Environmental Quality; Building Amenities; Site
Amenities and Neighbourhood Amenities.
• SBAT explicitly introduces performance criteria that acknowledge social and economic issues. A total 15
performance areas are identified – equally divided within the overarching sustainability framework of
environmental, social and economic. These performance areas are each described through 5 performance
criteria. Further, SBAT considers how it could become and integral part of, and subsequently influence, the
building production process by relating SBAT’s application to a nine-stage process based on the typical life
cycle of a building: Briefing, Site Analysis, Target Setting, Design, Design development, Construction,
Handover, Operation, Reuse/refurbish/recycle, is explicitly defined in this context.
®
• SPeAR functions as a project assessment methodology within Ove Arup’s consulting projects to enable a
®
rapid review of the sustainability of projects, plans, products and organisations. The SPeAR Diagram

- 1936 -
 The 2005 World Sustainable Building Conference,
Tokyo, 27-29 September 2005 (SB05Tokyo)

combines, in a graphical format, the diverse issues that need to be considered for sustainable design,
including social, economic, natural resource and environmental issues and acknowledges both negative
®
and positive results. Sustainability appraisals can use the SPeAR criteria and Diagram to highlight areas
where a project/design/development performs poorly in terms of sustainable principles and areas, which
require optimisation, or where the balance between positive and negative needs to be investigated in more
detail and to identify where actions need to be taken to improve sustainable performance such as
®
integrating best practice and using new technology. SPeAR does not attempt to provide a basis for
comparing a projects sustainability performance with that of other buildings, but relative to the strengths
and weaknesses within a particular context. This permits a greater level of subjectivity in the definition of
the performance criteria and their interpretation during scoring.
The starting point and expectation for these four assessment methods is qualitatively different from those of
the first generation of tools. However, although reference is made to sustainability criteria and issues, the
fundamental underpinnings regarding relative scoring and separate scoring of the individual criteria are
similar to those currently deployed in assessing “green” performance.

3. Future Intentions & Roles

Two inter-related requirements are likely to play critical roles in shaping future developments in assessment
tools:
• Acknowledging and fully embracing the requirements of sustainability
• Encouraging and assisting in dialogue between multiple stakeholders

A key question here is whether current assessment methods that were conceived and created to evaluate
the environmental merits of individual buildings can be easily transformed to account for a qualitatively
different role.

3.1 Embracing Sustainability

Our transition to an environmentally sustainable future will invariably parallel the rate and extent to which we
model all human enterprise – including buildings, infrastructure and settlement patterns – on natural systems
and processes. As such these, together with the requirement of accounting for social and cultural needs and
aspirations, should equally inform the design of assessment methods.
Robinson (2004), in reviewing how the concept of sustainable development has evolved in industrialized
countries since 1987, distinguishes between the notions of “sustainable development” and “sustainability.”
“Sustainable development,” he suggests, is favoured by government and the private sector while the term
“sustainability” has been increasingly used by academic, environmentalists and NGO’s. The distinction, as
well as the broad range of definitions and interpretations of each, reflect their proponents “philosophical and
moral conceptions of the appropriate way to conceive of the relationship between humanity and nature.”
Sustainable development maintains an anthropocentric view and favours incremental change that “does not
challenge any existing entrenched powers or privileges, institutional reforms and technological advance.”
Sustainability, by contrast, promotes a biocentric view that places the human presence within a larger natural
context, and focuses on constraints and fundamental value and behavioural change. Robinson further
suggests that if sustainability is to mean anything, “it must act as an integrating concept” and will require
“new concepts and tools that are integrative and synthetic, not disciplinary and analytic; and that actively
creates synergy, not just summation.” When judged against these criteria, current assessment tools are left
wanting in their ability to provide either insights or effective guidance on sustainability.
Several issues relate to some of the broad conceptual changes that would be required in a second
generation of tools to assist in charting this path:
• As with current systems, there is clearly value in keeping individual performance criterion scores distinct to
permit access by various stakeholders. Although it is generally accepted that performance criteria should
be carefully selected to avoid “double-counting,” an important, but seldom discussed, issue relates to ways
and extent to which assessment methods expose links or synergies between performance criteria. A
sustainable building is likely to be judged by the way that various systems fulfill multiple functions and,
indeed, it is typically only possible to achieve high environmental performance within demanding cost and
time constraints through the creative integration of systems. Similarly, while the three domains of
environmental, social and economic are typically used to frame sustainability, it is their points of
intersection that are equally critical, i.e., the ways and extent to which they positively or negatively
influence each other. Simply adding social criteria to the current mix of environmental performance
measures as is beginning to occur will not expose/highlight the way that one influences and is influenced

- 1937 -
 The 2005 World Sustainable Building Conference,
Tokyo, 27-29 September 2005 (SB05Tokyo)

by others. It can only do so if the tool is used as part of the deliberations between various stakeholders,
i.e., the use of the tool rather than the tool itself. That stated, it is important to ensure that environmental
and social goals are not, yet again, compromised within this process.
• Existing assessment developed for the marketplace, the private sector and increasingly being adopted by
government can be viewed as supporting the fundamental attributes of sustainable development as
articulated by Robinson above – anthropocentric, incremental change and technical advance – and, as
such leave fundamental questions and goals unaddressed. This suggests the need for greater clarification
of the overall goals and objectives as end points or desired outcomes rather than the current dominant
focus on assessing improvements relative to typical practice or other declared benchmarks.
• The current generation of environmental assessment tools were conceived to assess individual buildings
and performance issues are bounded by those factors that influence and are influenced by them. Rather
than simply the adoption of the notion of “sustainable” building as a replacement of “green” building, the
issue is one of establishing the extent to which buildings can support sustainable patterns of living
(product) and nurturing the demand for buildings that can do so (process).
• If, as Robinson suggests, that “what can and should be done to achieve a sustainable society is not
fundamentally a scientific or technical one” and that “scientific analysis can inform but not resolve the basic
questions posed by the concept of sustainability,” then the way that accuracy and precision are addressed
in the performance criteria, perhaps become less significant.
A number of fundamental issues and questions seem to lie at the heart of this debate:
• The need for a clarification and distinction between the role of a tool as an assessment – measuring
performance and progress – from their role as encouraging market transformation. This is symptomatic of
a wide range of expectations placed on such methods that, without being made explicit, cloud a host a
decisions regarding their structure and rigour. The notion of “assessment” implies uncompromised
accuracy, objectivity and transparency in defining the performance indicators and matched by an equally
rigorous process of evaluation. By contrast, the notion of a tool used for “market transformation” –
encouraging the market to aspire to higher performance – carries the implications of constraining the rate
and extent to which changes can be made (not to confuse the market), avoiding negative scoring, setting
performance requirements to encourage use, etc.
• A meaningful infusion of sustainability thinking into the building process cannot, as Kaatz et al. suggest, be
effectively achieved through stand-alone tools and ad-hoc assessments (Kaatz, Root and Bowen, 2004).
As such, the relationship between an assessment tool and other complementary mechanisms assumes
considerable importance. While the current generation of assessment methods are being expected to fulfill
multiple roles and, to an extent, being quite successful in doing so, it remains uncertain whether they can
retain this potency as the field matures.

3.2 Encouraging Dialogue

The notion that by structuring environmental criteria in an organized fashion, building environmental
assessment methods would provide structure and focus for design teams and create a common language,
remains a positive indirect benefit of using such tools. A more important, and perhaps primary, future role is
how they can transform the culture of the building industry to accommodate sustainability as a common,
consistent and integral part of its decision-making. Given the broad range of perspectives and stakeholders
interests, contradiction and conflict is inevitable. It is generally recognized that the significant changes
required to meet the dictates of sustainability cannot and will not occur through independent action but will
require concerted and broad-based partnerships. Brandon and Lombardi (2005), for example, explore how to
create “a structure of knowledge and thinking” that allows the development of a vocabulary that all
participants “can own and feel able to contribute.” The significant requirement is, therefore, the extent to
which assessment tools can provide a common language not just between the participants in the design
development, but how they can facilitate and enhance dialogue, communication and story-telling among and
between a common language between of all key parties involved in a building project – both technical and
administrative. More generally, can they be part of a mix of tools that can begin to facilitate greater cross-
fertilization of knowledge from different disciplines of natural and social sciences. In this role, it is not a
question of creating tools that can more accurately describe performance, it is one of acknowledging the
potential to change and positively influence the current mental models, attitudes and priorities of multiple
stakeholders involved in the production of the built environment.
The need to develop methods of deliberation and decision making that actively engage the relevant interests
of stakeholders will become increasingly important to infuse the sustainability considerations as an integral
part of day-to-day conduct and practice. Robinson suggests that the “power of sustainability lies precisely in

- 1938 -
 The 2005 World Sustainable Building Conference,
Tokyo, 27-29 September 2005 (SB05Tokyo)

the degree to which it brings to the surface these contradictions and provides a kind of discursive playing
field in which they can be debated” and subsequently encourage the “development of new modes of public
consultation and involvement intending multiple views to be expressed and debated.” Again the parallel
debate in building environmental assessment is becoming increasingly evident. Kaatz, Root and Bowen
(2004), for example, advocate the implementation of a broader participatory approach in building
assessment – it’s process design, definition of desired outputs and outcomes, etc.
Although they are quite generic in application, existing systems have also been concerned with regional
environmental priorities through the combination of declared performance issues and their attendant
weighting be-it explicit or implicit. GBTool, for example, was specifically designed to permit this
customization. Similarly, each region, through its social/institutional has its own way of conducting business,
setting policy and permitting environmental progress. For example, different regions in North America are
more receptive to grey water reuse and have removed many institutional and regulatory barriers, and some
areas have more mature green building markets that are more conducive to progress than others. It is simply
not an issue of weighting social against environmental, but creating a context that the relationship can be
exposed.
The development of assessment tools has been driven by the scoping and structuring of the performance
criteria. Although it is generally accepted that environmental criteria must be organized in ways that facilitate
meaningful dialogue and application, the structuring of criteria within the assessment method is most
important during the output of the performance evaluation, when the ‘story’ of the performance must be told
in a coherent and informative way to a variety of different recipients. CASBEE, for example explicitly
distinguishes between the way that performance information is organized during the assessment process
and how it is transformed to communicate a variety of different outputs. CASBEE uses a variety of different
output formats, providing the opportunity to tell different “stories” about a building’s performance – an overall
performance as well as more detailed descriptions.

4. Conclusions
Few would deny that the increase in development and application of building environmental assessment
methods has provided considerable theoretical and practical experience on their potential contribution in
furthering environmentally responsible building practices. While their most significant early contribution was
to acknowledge and institutionalize the importance of assessing building across a broad range of
considerations, the increased use of building environmental assessment methods has began to expose and
clarify a host of new potential roles. These primarily relate to their role in facilitating communication between
stakeholders. However, despite their current success and influence, and despite the fact that they embrace a
broad range of environmental considerations, current building assessment methods remain framed and
constrained by several underlying notions as the focus shifts to addressing sustainability and changing the
culture of the building industry.
This paper has attempted to redefine and clarify the emergent roles of assessment methods. The discussion
permits the clarification between the notions of performance assessment and market transformation, the
extent and ways that assessment methods expose relationships between environmental and social
considerations, enable synergistic links to be made and enhance dialogue amoung a broader range of
stakeholders than the design team.

5. References
Bradon, S.P., and Lombardi, P., (2005) Evaluating Sustainable Development in the Built Environment,
Blackwell Science Ltd., Oxford.
Cooper, I., 1999. Which focus for building assessment methods – environmental performance or
sustainability? Building Research & Information, 27(4/5), pp. 321-331.
Gibberd, J., (2001) The Sustainable Building Assessment Tool – Assessing how buildings can support
sustainability in Developing Countries, Continental Shift 2001 - IFI International Conference, 11 – 14
September 2001, Johannesburg
Hill, R., Bowen, P., Opperman, L. 2002. Sustainable building assessment methods in South Africa: an
agenda for research, Paper presented at SB02, Oslo, Netherlands, September 2002
Kaatz, E., Root, D. and Bowen, P. (2004) Implementing a Participatory Approach in a Sustainability Building
Assessment Tool, in Proceedings of the Sustainable Building Africa 2004 Conference (SB04), 13-18
September 2004, Stellenbosch, South Africa (CD Rom, Paper No. 001)
Robinson, J., 2004. Squaring the Circle? Some thoughts on the idea of sustainable development, Ecological
Economics, 48. 369-384

- 1939 -