A Study of the Effectiveness of BREEAM as an Assessment Tool for Sustainability by Interview of Practitioners

The increasing environmental obligations on the built environment have resulted in a range of assessment methods. A currently predominant choice, applied by developers and consultants is the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM). Our interviews with BREEAM-certified professionals evaluated the proficiency of BREEAM as a measure of sustainability and noted the nature of flaws in its current application. Primary research methods were in-depth, semi-structured interviews, developed from a thematic analysis of the previously published literature review. Results acknowledged that BREEAM is essentially an efficient tool for assessing the environmental performance of a development and that the evolving nature of BREEAM gives it the greatest potential to develop into a proficient measure of sustainability. However, this study concluded that BREEAM is not currently a proficient test for sustainability, as it does not address enough of the fundamental principles of sustainable development. If sustainability is the aim, then attention should focus on: 1. Product lifetime economics need to be built into the assessment. 2. Attention should be paid to the geographical location and environmental properties of the site. 3. Post construction, continual monitoring of effectiveness and evaluation of impacts should be carried out.