From my understanding, BREEAM essentially checks and certifies the sustainability of buildings, from new through to fit-out. Why aren’t all new buildings and fit-outs of old buildings made to go through this process?

Basically, to take a building up to a recognised grade in the BREEAM scheme it is very expensive & works more as an ethos to certain companies or individuals. In an ideal World all buildings being new or refit would be BREEAM certified but the drive needs to come from government in the way of incentives to make using all of the renewable technology feasible. For instance, a residential developer would need to incorporate bicycle & bin storage into a scheme but that is land that could be used for more profit making housing. Also the cost of the technology would add at least 30k to the overall cost of a house, passed on to the purchaser, would they be willing to pay that? In addition, BREEAM is easily implemented on a new build but for refurb not so. There is another scheme which is more suited to refurb called EnerPhit which might be worth looking into.

 

 

 

If there is interest in creating a more sustainable environment, why aren’t town planners, building contractors, government etc. implementing this scheme?

Basically this is the same as question 1.

 

 

 

I was told that large international companies, such as Nestle have a requirement that their buildings must be credited by BREEAM or similar, why is this?

This is a self-appointed requirement set by the company.

 

 

 

You have ratings of pass, good, very good, excellent and outstanding for buildings, what’s the difference between pass and outstanding?

Basically BREEAM works on a scoring system based on 17 requirements with a score system within each section. If say you look at materials, if you recycled the majority, you would score a 5 & the less you do, the lower the score. BREEAM excellent equates to nearly all 5’s across each section.

 

 

 

 If a building is designed to be self-sufficient, would it qualify to be certified BREEAM? Even if the method of building it was not sustainable?

Not necessarily, it has to still tick all the boxes of the BREEAM requirement, but there are other cortication methods available, i.e. passive house.

 

 

 

 Have you heard of the term biomimicry? If so, have you come across any buildings that have been certified BREEAM that use the concept?

I have, and I use to lecture on it to final year IAD. Biomimicry & BREEAM do not equate to one standard & I would suggest that most Biomimicry schemes are non UK buildings & BREEAM is devised in the UK.