June 2010

Brian Spires, director of HLM Environment, HLM Architects’ sustainability division, explains:

The last few years has seen a deluge of legislation and initiatives aimed at creating more sustainable buildings. The standard benchmark against which architects and contractors gauge and are gauged in school construction and refurbishment is BREEAM, the Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method. BREEAM operates on a points system, with 70 scoring Excellent and 85 and over achieving Outstanding. This system has led some to believe that the way to achieve a high rating is to include as many so-called environmental features as possible – in effect buying your way to BREEAM approval.

That’s a misconception, a mistake, and could easily be bursting budgets and harming the country’s long-term environmental credentials. Of course there’s nothing wrong with including a bank of cycle racks if the school you’re designing is trying to implement a green travel plan and encourage independence and healthier lifestyles among the student population. But if most of the racks will never feel a rubber tyre crash into place, it’s been a waste of time and money.

It’s also overlooked, amongst the hype about environmental improvement, that BREEAM isn’t just about saving the natural world. It’s about tackling local economic and social factors too; making significant inroads into local regeneration.

Perhaps the biggest mistake is in thinking of BREEAM as an end result; as an achievement. It should be a state of mind. It should be an attitude. It should be embedded in every thought process and conversation from the moment a project is born.

A handful of words crop up time after time when discussing success in construction: partnership; collaboration; team work. They’re as true with BREEAM as any other aspect of the industry. The right approach, taken by all parties from the outset, can deliver a highly rated, highly efficient and cost-effective building that isn’t bloated with unnecessary features. 

Assembling your team

You need a team with the right credentials to make BREEAM success a reality. If it’s not your client’s priority, then designers and contractors have a moral obligation to make the case for a sustainable design. When they realise you can achieve BREEAM excellence without adding cost, you’ll find a very receptive audience for your ideas.

The first of those ideas has to be bringing in a BREEAM assessor at concept design stage. Last year, we at HLM Architects working with Leadbitter completed Newport High School. It’s a case I’ll refer to again because of the lessons learned. Newport was the first secondary school in Wales to achieve BREEAM Excellent status, and without the need for increased funding. Bringing in a BREEAM assessor in the earliest days was fundamental.

The whole team, from main contractor to the last person on the supply chain, must be appointed for their dedication to and experience of sustainable builds. HLM design staff are taught to recognise that sustainability must be embedded into architecture. Your build team must all demonstrate that they can and will contribute to a sustainable ethos.

The construction industry must guide clients in best practice. Handholding and developing sustainability strategies and policies; studying successful builds and getting to the heart of clients’ needs are vital. From this you can refine a comprehensive project brief and a timetable that includes detailed monitoring of progress against sustainability targets as well as project milestones.

Consultation – inside and out

Once your BREEAM assessor is onboard, you can start establishing points to target, methods to consider and actions to take. Every member of your team will have ideas, so it’s a working list.

A collaborative approach is crucial throughout the project, but starts with a full stakeholder consultation; everyone with an interest in or affected by your building and its surroundings.

By allocating an architect to a particular stakeholder group, for instance a school department, you can establish continuity and rapport; critical to an interactive design development. Only by encouraging ideas and constructive criticism with every interest group can a thorough consultation be achieved. Once completed, everybody’s priorities, needs and wants can be assessed against sustainable design.

This is the right time for biodiversity studies. You could be dealing with the identification and safe relocation of all sorts of wildlife. Some surveys take six months to complete or must be undertaken at certain times of year; so take the chance to tie in your legal obligations with a positive contribution to the local ecology.

Painstaking consultation also enables social regeneration. Newport High School actively encourages community interaction through a sports and leisure centre that’s available during the school week, adult learning initiatives and a multipurpose community room; all of which have a substantial knock-on effect for economic revival. As well as short and medium-term job provision, a project like this provides long-term educational benefit to children and adults alike, encouraging local business growth and employment.

Eco-bling - worth its weight in gold?

Not necessarily. We’ve found the passive approach works best, often obviating the need for showy gadgets which pile on cost without adding value.

With Newport, we knew passive techniques would reduce baseline energy demand. Orientation and internal layouts were key to maximising natural light, minimising solar gains, providing cross-ventilation and improving U-values to 20% better than Part L regulations and air tightness to 50% better; all while providing optimum teaching space. None of this would be possible without the use of accurate computer modelling; specifically orientation modelling, solar passive and façade modelling and design and of course energy and performance modelling.

With carbon reduction the theme, but project budget providing a firm boundary, we then considered appropriate technologies which would help us achieve short-term targets and long-term cost reduction for the client.

Assessing lifecycle cost is the only way to calculate which technologies are worth the effort, and which are simply gaudy ornamentation. We found that daylight/presence detection for lighting controls, a CHP plant, solar hot water system, rainwater harvesting, heat recovery on ventilation and underfloor heating all stacked up financially and environmentally. A different project might have seen a different result: any site has geographical limitations, benefits and challenges, and the best possible passive approach defines which technologies you’ll use later.

Waste not, want not

A site waste management plan is a critical part of BREEAM success. Skills workshops will identify subcontractors and suppliers who can work with and supply recyclable and recycled materials. Off-site prefabrication is a favourite as it reduces waste significantly, but segregate and recycle what waste there is to WRAP standards. At Newport we were even able to use waste materials to create a sandpit for a local nursery and provide crushed waste for other community projects. Get embedded in the local community and you can make a huge difference while cutting environmental damage.

Look to the future

The time is approaching when BREEAM excellence will need to be a minimum. As an industry we’ve a way to go, although the last government set out goals for zero carbon schools by 2016 and zero carbon buildings by 2019. Not long ago those dates were the setting for science fiction stories; they’re now hurtling towards us. Take the right approach to BREEAM now and we might meet those goals.