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BEAM P
LUS FOR
N
EW
B
UILDINGS
F
RAMEWORK
V
ERSION
1.2
Copyright © 2012 BEAM Society Limited. All rights reserved.
Page 5
1.2 A
SSESSMENT
F
RAMEWORK FOR
N
EW
B
UILDINGS
This document describes BEAM Plus for New Buildings. This version can
also be used where buildings have undergone a major refurbishment.
Assessment of existing buildings is carried out using BEAM Plus for
Existing Buildings. Both New Buildings and Existing Buildings of BEAM
are designed to dovetail together to allow coverage of the life cycle
performance of buildings.
Assessment under BEAM Plus for New Buildings covers the demolition
planning, design, construction and commissioning of a building and
should be initiated in the early stages of project development. BEAM
Plus for New Buildings aims to reduce the environmental impacts of new
buildings whilst improving quality and user satisfaction, by adoption of
the best techniques available within reasonable cost.
According to the emerging international consensus, building
assessments should be performance based as far as possible.
Assessment needs to take a holistic view of building performance with
emphasis on life-cycle impacts. Assessment purely on the basis of
prescriptive features would preclude buildings without the features from
obtaining a good assessment result regardless of the actual
performance. Furthermore, assessment based on features may
encourage feature-based design, construction and operating practices.
A notable attribute of BEAM Plus for New Buildings, as compared with
most schemes in use elsewhere, is that an assessment for new buildings
is not finalised until a building is completed, ensuring that ‘green’ and
‘sustainable’ design features are actually implemented and construction
practice meets the required performance standards. Besides being in the
interests of the Client in certifying the actual performance of the finished
product, this approach also serves to ‘dovetail’ assessment with that
used for existing buildings. It would be expected that a building graded
under BEAM Plus for New Buildings and suitably operated and
maintained would achieve a similar grade under BEAM Plus for Existing
Buildings five years later.
H
OLISTIC
A
SSESSMENT
BEAM integrates the assessment of many key aspects of building
performance, embracing:
hygiene, health, comfort, and amenity;
land use, site impacts and transport;
use of materials, recycling, and waste management;
water quality, conservation and recycling; and
energy efficiency, conservation and management.
T
RANSPARENCY
BEAM recognises that assessment criteria and methods to achieve
compliance need to be transparent, providing details of the benchmarks
(baselines), data, assumptions and issues taken into account in the
assessments and the credit ratings.
A
SSESSMENTS OF
E
XISTING
B
UILDINGS
BEAM Plus for New Buildings attempts to cover all types of buildings,
from small single buildings to large buildings on residential and
commercial estates. The assessment needs to cover the various types of
premises contained within the development, and may involve premises
that are only a ‘shell’ or are fitted-out. Whatever the circumstances,
assessment focuses on what the designer, builder and commissioning
agent achieve. Assessment of some aspects of performance may be
type dependent, or not feasible for various reasons, so the number of
applicable credits and their aggregation will vary. This is taken into
account in determining the performance grade.