Changes in the Assessment Procedure – The Introduction of Compliance Assessment

BEAM Society Limited (BSL) will implement changes in the assessment procedure for projects undertaking BEAM Plus New Buildings Version 2.0 (NB v2.0) assessment, which will offer an option for applicants to seek for a "Compliance Assessment"¹ before the issuance of Occupation Permit (OP). A trial run for Compliance Assessment is launched via the iBEAM. Comments and feedback will be collected during the trial run and the procedure will be refined before the formal implementation of Compliance Assessment.

2. Under the revised assessment procedure, the Final Assessment (FA), which is currently conducted after the issuance of OP, will be split into two parts, viz Compliance Assessment (CA) and Remaining FA (RFA). Credit items of NB v2.0 which can be submitted for CA and RFA, are categorised as follows –

a) Compliance Assessment (CA) (to take place within six months before OP)

(i) Document Check: credit(s) compliance can be demonstrated by reports, drawings, meeting minutes, catalogues, etc.

(ii) Advance Submittal: credit(s) compliance can be demonstrated by more complex documents such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)/ energy/ acoustic simulations, daylight analysis, ventilation calculations, etc.

b) Remaining FA (RFA) (to take place within 18 months after OP)

(i) Performance Check: documentary proof only available after the issuance of OP, such as Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) measurement, Testing & Commissioning (T&C) records, Operations & Maintenance (O&M) training record, etc.

(ii) Credits under Document Check and Advance Submittal can also be submitted in RFA if they are not submitted in the CA.

3. Please find attached for your information and reference a Compliance Assessment Checklist with each credit in NB v2.0 categorised according to paragraph 2 above.

4. To further enable applicants to have a better monitoring of the readiness of their submittals and an earlier evaluation of credit achievable for their projects before seeking OP, applicants can and are encouraged to make their submissions through our iBEAM by batches of credits for Document Check and Advance Submittal. Applicant may start the CA 6 months prior to the scheduled OP date.

5. The applicant will be notified of the result of assessment in 5 working days for Document Check and 15 working days for Advance Submittal under Compliance Assessment. The Applicant can cease the Compliance Assessment at any time when the project has obtained the targeted scoring at this stage. On the other hand, the assessment procedure under the CA stage will cease once the project has attained the "GOLD" rating. All the credits and submission that have not been submitted and/ or assessed during the CA stage will be assessed during the RFA stage, which, like the usual FA, shall be completed within 18 months after the issuance of OP.

6. A series of briefing sessions will be held to explain and demonstrate to applicants the detail procedures of CA and how to achieve credits by using iBEAM. We will also hold exchange forums to collect feedback and comments from applicants and stakeholders for enhancing the procedures and user-friendliness of the iBEAM System. Please be on the lookout for any upcoming E-news on this issue.

7. Training courses and video demonstration on iBEAM are available on our website. At the moment, a Compliance Assessment trial is available on-line to allow applicants to have an actual observation of how the new processes would be. Interested applicant can click [HERE] to start the demo.

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