Jennifer Potter explains the important work undertaken by the Building Research Establishment.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the United Nations Environment Programme reported that CO₂ emissions from the building and construction sector were the highest ever recorded. Electricity consumption in building operations represented more than half of global electricity consumption and CO₂ emissions from the operation and construction of buildings contributed 38% of total global energy-related CO₂ emissions.
While the pandemic saw a reduction in some of these areas, post-pandemic recovery schemes could lead to further increases in emissions, if sustainability and carbon reduction are not included at the heart of plans. Many of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals can be linked to the built environment and achieving these will be hugely dependent on the quality of the buildings and infrastructure we construct and manage.
Pursuing a career in the property industry should, in part, involve a desire to improve the future of life on Earth. On top of this, the evolving expertise required to tackle these issues means that a career in property can be incredibly interesting, with opportunities to use and develop better building knowledge and data-based insights.
Climate change and UK housing stock
Everywhere is experiencing the dramatic effects of climate change. Here in the UK, according to the Met Office, we are likely to see warmer and wetter winters, hotter and drier summers, and more frequent and intense weather extremes. To ensure our continued health and safety, we are going to need a built environment which is resilient to these effects. In 2020, the Building Research Establishment reported that the UK’s housing stock was the oldest in Europe. Much of this stock was not designed for many of the extremes we are likely to see as a result of climate change.
The BRE: UK and worldwide
BRE’s mission is to improve the built environment through research and knowledge generation. This led to an early focus in the BRE’s lifetime on sustainability and safety as a mechanism for improving the spaces in which we live and work. BRE’s products are used around the globe, and with hubs in the US, Ireland, and China as well as the UK, it provides services for both emerging and mature markets.
Initially formed in 1921 to investigate and develop standards for construction, such as the development of the British Standard for bricks, BRE has more than 100 years of experience at the leading edge of building research and development. As a profit-for-purpose organisation, BRE ensures that profit is invested in research projects for the public benefit, such as methods to improve sustainability in post-disaster structures.
BREEAM assessment
More recently, BRE has created a range of certification schemes, consultancy services, training courses and testing facilities in line with ESG aims. One of the more well-known of these is BREEAM certification (which stands for the Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method).
BREEAM is the world’s leading sustainability assessment method for masterplanning projects, infrastructure and individual buildings. It recognises and reflects the value in higher performing assets across the built environment lifecycle, from new construction to in-use and refurbishment. To do this, BREEAM provides third-party certification of an assessment of an asset’s performance across a range of environmental, social and economic sustainability criteria. These are grouped into categories to explore specific areas; for example, the energy or water use of the asset.
The categories considered in a BREEAM assessment are: energy; health and wellbeing; innovation; land use and ecology; materials; management; pollution; transport; waste; and water. Not all of these categories will be relevant to each scheme; for example, the category of management applies to in-use assets rather than to those under construction. Weightings are applied to the categories to recognise their relative importance, and the weighted scores are then calculated to provide an overall score and BREEAM rating from “Acceptable” through to “Outstanding”.
The assessment includes minimum standards criteria, ensuring that performance against fundamental environmental issues is not overlooked in pursuit of a particular rating. In doing so, evidence must be provided to support each answer in the questionnaire, which will then be verified before providing a final certificate. Some of these criteria can be explored further in the BREEAM New Construction 2018 manual.
BREEAM assessment tailored to different global locations
BREEAM recognises that the importance and relevance of certain categories of the assessment will vary between regions around the globe, so the weightings of each category towards the overall score are adjusted slightly on a countrywide or regional basis. Great consideration is required to balance recognising the importance of the category against the specific situation of a country or region.
To recognise the changing role of sustainability in the built environment, BREEAM schemes are updated regularly; a recent update of the BREEAM In-Use Version 6 scheme saw the launch of residential development-based assessments, recognising the increased importance of residential assets, and placed greater emphasis on resilience to climate change, social value and circular economy principles. This chimes well with the current increased focus on ESG policies adopted by property and construction companies.
Health and wellbeing in the built environment
The quality of the built environment is critical to the health and wellbeing of those who occupy it. A recent BRE report, The Cost of Poor Housing in England, found that poor housing is costing the NHS £1.4bn every year and that 11% of the country’s housing stock is categorised as “poor quality” and therefore hazardous to occupants. The highest cost was found to be from treating conditions related to excess cold.
Many of us are aware of some of these hazards – for example, checking for signs of damp when viewing a rental property – but do we truly understand the impact of living in poor quality housing on both our mental and physical health?
Funding can be made available from the government for local authorities looking to tackle challenges such as improving local housing stock, but this poses another set of problems: how do we identify where the problems are, and how do we go about ensuring that these can be improved? BRE assists local authorities in tackling some of these challenges through its local government data and insights services.
To improve the built environment, we need to understand and develop new methods and materials. This is where BRE’s range of testing facilities excel, with the ability to test individual materials and products through to engineering structures and whole buildings. These can be tested against published standards, but where necessary for unique or innovative products, BRE is well placed to develop dedicated procedures for testing and certification. The number of tests and standards required for new products and materials might come as a surprise, but every aspect needs to be tested to ensure it is safe for general use. This can range from measuring the sound power of small domestic appliances in an anechoic chamber through to wind tunnel testing to determine the pedestrian environment around a building or the optimal locations of ventilation inlets and exhausts.
BRE’s SABRE certification scheme emphasises another important aspect of safety in the built environment: the security of existing buildings, infrastructure assets and managed space. SABRE provides a framework which focuses on each aspect of the design, construction and operation of assets to achieve better security outcomes and return on investment through a process of security risk management.
Security is a key aspect of building safety, with vastly different impacts and implementations depending on asset type and use: a data centre that stores or processes sensitive information will have very different requirements to that of a residential development.
Improving our building stock both across the UK and the wider world is a huge challenge, but the scale of the issue is perhaps what makes it so important. In order to make changes, we first need to identify the problems with accurate information to inform data-driven action. This is not always readily available, so how do we go about collecting or modelling this? How do we target the most important issues with the resources we have available? The large majority of us spend most of our time in built spaces and ensuring that these are beneficial to our health and wellbeing and to the wider environment as the world adapts to the effects of climate change is one of the critical challenges of the coming decades.
Making a difference
Pursuing a property-based career in the built environment and helping drive the crucial necessary environmental changes is both rewarding and exciting as there is a huge opportunity to make a real difference. It is important to ensure that the practice of sustainability is included at every stage of our actions. While frameworks for considering sustainable solutions are incredibly useful tools, the fundamental challenge is: how do we go about placing the principles of sustainability at the heart of property-based decisions in the built environment? That’s where you come in.
Jennifer Potter is a sustainability graduate at the Building Research Establishment. Mainly for Students is edited by Paul Collins, a senior lecturer at Nottingham Trent University. He welcomes suggestions for the column and can be contacted at paul.collins@ntu.ac.uk
