SR350 New Zealand whole-building whole-of-life framework: Development of reference office buildings for use in early design (2016)

BRANZ, with industry and research partners, has developed the New Zealand whole-building whole-of-life framework, which aims to provide resources to facilitate more consistent use of life cycle assessment (LCA) applied to buildings. This is especially important now that building LCA is recognised within the Innovation category of the Green Star building environmental rating tool.

To help designers to understand the life cycle environmental implications of their designs based on LCA, reference office buildings have been developed to act as comparators during the design process. These reference office buildings are based on consented New Zealand buildings (that are entirely offices or largely offices) with gross floor areas exceeding 1,500 m², located in either Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch. They have been developed for application to early design and reflect building structure and thermal envelope, as well as simulated energy use during occupation according to energy model outputs.

Generic environmental impact data for products used in the structure and thermal envelope have been developed in order to calculate environmental indicators for the reference office buildings, normalised to floor area.

These reference office buildings are embedded within the awareness raising tool LCAQuick – Office to provide a basis for comparison during early design.