Development of benchmarks for sustainable buildings

The proposed standard, titled Sustainability in buildings and civil engineering works – Methodological principles for the development of benchmarks for sustainable buildings, will be useful to building owners, investors, cities, building authorities and designers. The work will build further on the suite of standards developed by ISO/TC 59/SC 17 and CEN/TC 350, especially ISO 21929-1:2011 Sustainability in building construction – Sustainability indicators – Part 1: Framework for the development of indicators and a core set of indicators for buildings, which was developed by SC 17/WG 2. 

In the past, the sustainability assessment was mostly used for marketing purposes. Now the situation has changed. The definition of project objectives and the process of planning are increasingly guided by the sustainability content. This requires changing the course of the sustainability assessment and the use of the results.

Sustainable building assessment tools typically have performance rating scale at the levels of indicators and buildings. However, considering the lack of some indicators, the further development of both performance levels and benchmarking criteria is required. Benchmarks are also important because there is a need to understand and explain the linkage between property value and issues of sustainable development in order to promote sustainable building. Transparent methods and common principles are needed for the development of benchmarks.

The aim is to define a minimum quality and coverage of information needed for the benchmarks of sustainable building when conformity with the standard is declared. The proposed new standard will cover the following:

• definition of different types of benchmarks,
• description of the application cases of benchmarks,
• definition of methodological principals for the development of different types of benchmarks,
  • sources of information,
  • coverage of information,
  • validity of values in different regions,
• description of the relation of benchmarks with reference units and normalization and aggregation methods.

The work is proposed undertaken by SC 17/WG 2 "Sustainability indicators", whis is currently inactive. If the project is approved by the SC 17 members, the working group is likely to be re-activated.