Jorge Chapa, Head of Market Transformation
Green Building Council of Australia
Life Cycle Assessment can be complex and expensive. While upfront carbon should be assessed on all building projects, time, resources, and budget often compete with this Climate Emergency design imperative.
We hope to change this by offering a Life Cycle Assessment as an embedded component of energy or daylight modelling, building on our existing workflows so you can deliver design or EN 15978 assessments in less than an hour.
We are now getting ready to launch our Life Cycle assessment feature.
“Every project team gets just one shot to reduce the upfront carbon of their next building.”
There is no rigorous framework for testing and verifying Lifecycle Assessments yet, so we are reaching out to experienced Life Cycle Assessors that may be able to contribute to this process.
Until December 2022, we will be engaging with the Australian and New Zealand market to help create a better approach to Life Cycle Assessment that is cost and time sensitive, yet rigorous and transparent.
We released the Life cycle Assessment (Preview) on the 27th of September. Included in Essentials and Practice plans or for free (sign-up and reach out)
Sign-upWe need your feedback. In exchange for free access to the Speckel platform or the Life Cycle Assessment feature, we need 1 hour of your time before October 31st. During this session, we will walk you though the features and grab your feedback and feature requests.
Book a Life Cycle Assessment WorkshopAfter grabbing your feedback and feature requests, we will be diving back into the code in November, aiming to meet your requirements. And yes, you will still be able to get free access during this period.
The exciting bit. In early January, our new feature rich, market-tested Life Cycle Assessment feature will be available and fully integrated in our Building Assessment App. Sign-up to attend the launch.
Life Cycle Overview
Consulting with Australian based Life Cycle Assessment professionals, we have found a general agreement that time, resources, and budget often compete with the ability to assess the Life Cycle impact of building on the environment.
As a result, we would like to remove these barriers with a view to creating a design workflow that goes' beyond spreadsheets and forms'. This can be achieved by adding additional features to our existing workflows.
Easy. Just two steps. First, make sure you have an account. If you don't, sign-up here (it's free). Next, hit us up for a workshop!
When released, Life Cycle Assessments will be integrated into a out current plans.
Our future pricing will inevitably increase but as a reflection of overall platform value, not as a direct result of Life Cycle Assessments.
Yes. As a tested and verified software solution, we expect to get a great response from the market, including green building councils and local councils.
100%. Any data you contribute to this process is by default yours. read more about our Privacy Policy.
A design stage is either a 'early design' stage, set up to encourage upfront carbon assessments or a 'EN15978 Standard', where additional rules apply.
A project budget is set for Construction A5, to determine the amount of construction-stage estimations.
System Boundaries a re available for Products (A1-A3), Construction (A4-A5), In-Use (B1-B6) and End-of-Use (C1-C4).
Practical completion is set for the anticipated year that construction is completed. It is used throughout the Life Cycle Assessment within various modules.
The operational period is the operational lifetime of building. It is used throughout the Life Cycle Assessment within various modules.
To account for building services material extraction, materials and construction, the ‘basic’ calculation method referenced in TM65: 2021 has been adopted.
TM65 provides guidance on how to use environmental product declarations (EPDs) for building services products. Where EPDs are not available, TM65 provides guidance on how to estimate the embodied carbon of building services products.
100%. We have added some 'default' systems and can add many more, all we need is the data. When selecting a air conditioning product or system, quantity, service life, refrigerant type and weight and materials are all required. Our goal is to improve the 'default' values so non-building services designers can also use this feature.
100%. We have added some 'default' systems and can add many more, all we need is the data. When selecting a hot water product or system, quantity, service life and materials are all required. Our goal is to improve the 'default' values so non-building services designers can also use this feature.
100%. All we need is the data. Get in touch to drop in some ideas. Nothing is off limits, as long as it makes sense.
100%. Reach out and we can share the process to grab the information you need to request more detail from your building services supplier. All we need is the data. Get in touch.
All environmental impacts are quantified in Global warming potential (GWP), or kg CO2 eq.
Embodied carbon assumptions for raw materials, transport, and manufacturing are sourced through published Environmental Indicator databases (e.g. BRANZ, EPiC or Building Transparency). To account for building services material extraction, materials and construction, the ‘basic’ calculation method referenced in TM65: 2021 has been adopted.
Speckel is data agnostic in regards to databases. If you have any preference for other databases, please get in touch and we can look into adding other options.
CO₂NSTRUCT provides values for embodied greenhouse gas and energy for some construction materials. These have been integrated into Speckel. Find out more here.
Speckel is data agnostic in regards to databases. If you have any preference for other databases, please get in touch and we can look into adding other options.
The EPiC Database is a comprehensive and consistent open-access Life Cycle Inventory of environmental flow coefficients for construction materials. The database contains over 850 coefficients that can be incorporated into existing Life Cycle Assessment workflows and processes. These have been integrated into Speckel. Find out more here.
Speckel is data agnostic in regards to databases. If you have any preference for other databases, please get in touch and we can look into adding other options.
Building Transparency's core mission is to provide the open access data and tools necessary to enable broad and swift action across the building industry in addressing embodied carbon's role in climate change.
The core service is the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3), a free database of construction EPDs. EC3 is a dynamic tool — embodied carbon search results reflect the specific criteria for the user’s search and the most up-to-date data available. Results change as EPDs are added to the database. Find out more here.
Speckel is data agnostic in regards to databases. If you have any preference for other databases, please get in touch and we can look into adding other options.
Yes and no, its up to you. We do default to carbon sequestration not being included.
No. At present, we are only enabling databases with a focus on early design stage. Our intent is not to handle any additional data related to suppliers and EPD's.
Should you wish to be able to add EPD's to Speckel directly, please get in touch and we can look into adding feature on to the full release in December or January 23.
No. We are mainly focused on superstructure and substructure elements (wall, roof, ceilings, floors, walls, surfaces, columns, and beams) of the building as they have significantly higher impacts than most other materials going into the building.
Should you wish to see smaller items added to our workflow, please get in touch.
Embodied carbon assumptions for transporting materials and products from the factory gate to the building site are set at a material level, defaulting to 1000 km per material if unknown.
If specific values are required, distances from the factory gate can be mapped, with legs (land or sea) adopted. Where land is adopted, truck size is configured.
To account for building services transport to site, the TM65: 2021 scale up factor has been adopted.
Embodied carbon assumptions for construction are currently derived from Project Budget, based on RICS Professional Statement Whole life carbon assessment for the built environment.
This encompasses embodied carbon assumptions for construction installation processes, including groundworks and landscaping, storage, transportation, the provision of heating, cooling and ventilation and the production, transportation and waste management of products and materials lost during the construction and installation process.
Its a big assumption, so tell us what you think.
Embodied carbon assumptions for the impacts and aspects arising from normal conditions of use of components of the building. To account for emissions associated with refrigerant leakage during use, the TM65: 2021 has been adopted.
Its a big assumption, so tell us what you think.
Embodied carbon assumptions for maintenance, include the production and transportation of the components and ancillary products used for maintenance, cleaning processes of the interior and exterior of the building, all processes for maintaining the functional and technical performance of the building integrated technical systems, as well as aesthetic qualities of the building’s interior and exterior components.
Its a big assumption, so tell us what you think.
Embodied carbon assumptions for repair, include any repair processes to the building components during the use stage of the building.
To account for the repair of building services, the TM65: 2021 scale-up factor has been adopted.
Embodied carbon assumptions for replacement include the production, transportation, replacement, waste management and end-of-life stage process of components and ancillary products.
Embodied carbon assumptions for refurbishment include the production and transportation of the building components, construction and waste management as part of the refurbishment process and the end-of-life stage of replaced building components.
Embodied carbon assumptions for operation energy are determined over the building’s life. This is determined under Scope and Boundaries.
The energy performance of a building is determined based on the calculated or the actual annual energy to meet the different needs associated with defined uses of the building, including heating, air conditioning (cooling and humidification/de-humidification), ventilation, hot water supply, lighting and equipment.
Alongside predicted operational energy use, determined in EnergyPlus, grid decarbonisation and future climate simulations (coming soon) allow advanced operational considerations typically unavailable.
In order to take into account future climate data, when selected, a future climate file for your site produced by a process called morphing.
Morphing is an algorithm used to morph the present-day observed weather files (EPWs) to produce future climate weather files. The EPW data is used as the *'baseline climate' and amended based on a selected Climate Scenario (worst-case, second worst-case, medium pathway or optimistic).
This is future climate file is then used to assess heating and cooling loads throughout the duration of the Life Cycle Assessment, with interpolations made every 10 years.
If disabled, assumes a typical meteorological year (TMY) weather file for your site.
