BREEAM

The Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) is the world’s leading design and assessment method for sustainable buildings.[1]

It sets the best practice in sustainable building design and encourages designers to think about low carbon and energy efficient technologies and reduce energy demand.

A BREEAM assessment uses recognised measures of performance, which are set against established benchmarks, to evaluate a building’s specification, design, construction and use.

The measures used represent a broad range of categories and criteria from energy to ecology. They include aspects related to energy and water use, the internal environment (health and well-being), pollution, transport, materials, waste, ecology and management processes.

Figure 1 : BREEAM Diagram

We used the BREEAM Data Centres 2010 Pre Assessment Estimator because it is the more adequate pre-assessment estimator for our building. The BREEAM tracker assesses the building on ten key aspects: Management, Health and Wellbeing, Energy, Transport, Water, Materials, Waste, Land Use and Ecology, Pollution and Innovation. It then gives a score in percentage form, and is classified below.[2]

Figure 2 : BREEAM classification

Figure 3 : BREEAM Score

Our data centre is in the outstanding category with this score.

Nonetheless, our building has improvement tracks:

Reduction of CO2 emissions (10 marks on 15): Although we chose low embodied and green materials we didn’t make a total estimations of the building CO2 emissions, therefore we don’t know where the CO2 footprint could be reduce.
Accessibility of the data centre (5/10): we are far from the local amenities with no cyclist facilities nor developed pedestrian and cyclist safety. Moreover the parking would have been reduced from 1 place for 3 employees to 1 for 4 employees following BREEAM recommendations.
The noise reduction (0/1) didn’t receive special attention and could be easily improve.
There is lack in measuring the water major leaks and in recycling used water (

On the other hand the strengths of our data centre are:

The use of the daylight and LED lamps to reduce lighting electrical consumption.
The high levels of insulation, the local source of materials and their recyclability.
The major use of natural cooling for the server room.
The supply in hot water almost exclusively from solar panel collector.
The electricity supply from solar photovoltaic panels.

We would employ an ecologist for reducing CO2 emissions and a consultant for improving the accessibility of the data centre. An acoustics expert should be hired too to reduce the noise in the building and improve the well-being of the employees.

For the final BREEAM assessment a BREEAM expert should be hired to mark officially our building. Additional marks are given if a BREEAM Accredited Professional (AP) accompany us throughout the whole project.

BREEAM_Data_Centres_2010_Pre_Assessment_Est__rev00.xls

References

[1]BREEAM. (2015). What is BREEAM?. Available: http://www.breeam.org/about.jsp?id=66. Last accessed April 2015.

[2]BREEAM. (2015). Pre-Assessment Estimator. Available: http://www.breeam.org/filelibrary/Technical%20Manuals/BREEAM_Data_Centres_2010_Pre_Assessment_Est__rev00.xls. Last accessed April 2015.