Greening the Gulf

BREEAM Gulf is designed to take local environmental conditions into consideration.
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Mark Standen of BRE Global examines the new BREEAM scheme designed to reduce the environmental impact of the construction industry through evaluating and improving the performance of new buildings within the Gulf region

With ever growing pressure for the construction industry to build more sustainability a credible means of proving the environmental performance of a building is becoming vitally important. 

On the back of projects recently undertaken for specific clients in the region BRE Global have created the first environmental assessment method that has been specifically tailored for the use in the Gulf. In order to ensure that the criteria is appropriate to the region we have a number of projects in Qatar, Abu Dhabi and a large free-zone project in Dubai that are using “pilot criteria”.

The information received from these pilot projects is helped us to shape the criteria, assessment process and scoring so that it is appropriate for local climate conditions, cultural differences and construction practices.

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BREEAM Gulf is based on the successful UK version, local experts were consulted and their experience of working in the region was drawn upon to help ensure that the criteria is appropriate for the region. An example of this is the Ecology section, to reflect local conditions the ecology section is significantly different to that of the UK versions and recognises the impact from large near-shore and marine reclamation projects.

BREEAM Gulf is also entirely open to refinement, we are happy to work with regional regulatory bodies and the industry to ensure that the criteria is appropriate for the region rather than imposing a method that refers to criteria that are unworkable. 

Because of the mixed use nature of a large proportion of the developments in the Gulf the scheme has been developed to be sufficiently flexible to assess most functions and in any configuration. The environmental weightings that are applied to each category have also been amended to suite the locality, again using feedback from local experts. Because of the extensive use of desalination to produce potable water the weighting of the Water section was increased to take into account the higher carbon intensity.

To ensure that the criteria is familiar to the varied backgrounds of the design teams the scheme also, where appropriate, refers to internationally accepted best practice principles and standards. 

Within BREEAM Gulf, the environmental impacts fall into nine categories. Credits are awarded in the nine categories according to performance. These credits are then added together to produce a single overall score, which is reflected in a Star rating, with a maximum of 5 Stars for truly exemplar buildings.

BREEAM Gulf offers a much more complete picture of the overall environmental performance of a building compared to any other assessment method. In addition to criteria that are applied on a generic building basis BREEAM has credits that are available for specific building function, such as a kitchen within a restaurant or a car wash in a retail development.

BREEAM Gulf incorporates a filtering tool, which the assessor uses to identify the functions that are present in the assessed building. For those credits that are only applicable to specific functions and these functions are not present in the assessed building the tool will remove them from the assessment.

This facility further enables BREEAM Gulf assessments to be entirely appropriate and specific to the building that is being assessed and the region that is it located in. The result of this is a method that has been entirely tailored to suit the region and is sufficiently flexible to be used on the vast majority of projects.

As BREEAM Gulf is an independent certification scheme third party qualified BREEAM assessors must be employed to carry out an assessment. This means all the work can be carried out in the Gulf - by professionals who are familiar with local construction practices - rather than having to forward the relevant info to agencies located in remote locations.

The assessor is directly involved with the design of the assessed building and is able to influence the building to ensure that the environmental performance is maximised and therefore higher BREEAM ratings are achieved.

The assessors tend to work for internationally recognised consultancies and also for regulatory bodies with the Gulf.
BRE Global host a number of training courses around the world including in the Gulf to train construction specialists to become qualified BREEAM Assessors.

For more information visit www.breeam.org/gulf or contact the BREEAM Office, +44 (0)1923 664462, email breeam@bre.co.uk.  A list of licensed BREEAM International assessors is also maintained on the website.

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