Delivering sustainable buildings: Savings and payback

There is a growing need to demonstrate the value and benefits of BREEAM in order to increase voluntary uptake of BREEAM schemes. The recent part BRE Trust funded publication ‘Delivering sustainable buildings: Savings and payback’ reported research by BREEAM and Sweett Group that applied cost data from real construction projects to three case study buildings (an office, a secondary school and a community healthcare centre) to obtain detailed capital and operational cost information associated with gaining different ratings under the BREEAM UK New Construction 2011 scheme. The findings showed that, where properly implemented, BREEAM related sustainability strategies add little to capital costs and that operational savings will typically payback any such costs within a few years.

The publication of the previous ‘savings and payback’ work generated a lot of interest and positive feedback from the industry, with many calls to update and expand this initial work to cover other BREEAM schemes, including the current BREEAM UK New Construction 2014, and to add new features (e.g. coverage of different building types). There was particular interest from the retail sector, with a number of organisations, including Waitrose/John Lewis Partnership and Hammerson, keen to assess the value of BREEAM to the retail sector and willing to provide in kind contributions to the project.

For more information on the original publication click here.