The BRE Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) is an environmental assessment method for entire buildings, not individual building elements or materials.
BREEAM assesses the overall performance of buildings using the factors shown in the diagram below, awarding credits in each area according to performance. The process then uses a set of environmental weightings to enable the credits to be added together to produce a single overall score of Excellent, Very Good, Good or Pass. Due to the wide nature of the assessment, every individual building must be subject to an individual assessment by a BRE licensed assessor.
The assessments are carried out for six building sectors Domestic, Health, Industrial, Commercial, Retail and Education.
There are several elements which make up a building’s overall rating. These are Upper Floor Construction, Internal Wall, External Wall Construction, Insulation, Commercial Windows, Roof Construction, Landscaping and Floor Finishes.
It is the designer’s responsibility to specify the appropriate systems for all the elements, e.g. wall construction, floor construction, roof construction etc. that allow the building to achieve the best BREEAM Rating
The Green Guide to Specification uses Life Cycle Assessment to provide environmental ratings for common specifications of individual major construction elements such as a roof, wall, floor, etc. The process utilises the ‘cradle to gate’ ratings calculated in the Environmental Profiling (Ecopoints) process and adds into the assessment the impacts of transport to site, installation, maintenance and disposal at end of life. The resulting output of the whole specification is expressed as an A+, A, C, D or E rating. Typical whole roofing element specification ratings, as published in the Green Guide for Specification, are shown in the table below.
|BRE Whole Roof Specification Ratings:|
|Polyester Cold Applied Liquid Waterproofing||A+|
|Polymethylmethacrylate Cold Applied Liquid Waterproofing||A+|
|Polyurethane Cold Applied Liquid Waterproofing||A+|
Typical BRE Green Guide ratings for waterproofing, insulation, vcl, steel deck and steel trusses
KEMPER SYSTEM manufacture [polyester/polyurethane/polymethylmethacrylate] systems, which comply with the BREEAM generic element ratings for roof constructions as listed in the Green Guide to Specification website. Cold applied liquid roofing membranes have been recognised by BRE to help roofing elements achieve up to an A+ rating (depending on the roof construction), demonstrating the sustainability and low environmental impact of this chemistry type.