There has been a desire to harmonize sustainable construction assessment methods in the EU by means of standards. An important source of information is the environmental statements of construction products, which are based on CEN standards. Standards harmonize practices and remove barriers to trade.
In assessing the sustainability of construction, the risk of misinterpretation has been high when the methods have been varied and the importance of different factors has not been recognized. The assessment methods in different countries have also reflected political emphasis.
Standards, on the other hand, aim for calculated information. They create common rules that can be used to produce neutral information about sustainable construction and focus the examination on what is essential.
The use of standards is the basis of sustainable construction for transparent and uniform assessment.
The CEN/TC 350 standard family offers comprehensive tools
The European standards for transparent evaluation and calculation methods of sustainable construction have been prepared by the technical committee of the standardization organization CEN (TC 350 Sustainability of construction works). The CEN/TC 350 work creates a European harmonized set of standards for building-level impact assessment, which is the basis for the European system and common rules of the game.
The CEN/TC 350 family of standards includes its own standards for producing environmental data for construction products that serve as input data, as well as for assessing the environmental impact of buildings.
The work has now been expanded to include the assessment of other aspects of sustainable construction as well as the impact assessment of infrastructure construction.
In Finland, the industry community responsibility for the technical committee CEN/TC 350 is Rakennustuoteollisuus RTT ry.
Goals of standardization work
Standardization work aims for jointly agreed, transparent and credible rules of the game in Europe for the life cycle-based environmental impact assessment of buildings, based on the ISO 14040 standard series for life cycle assessment (LCA, i.e. Life cycle assessment).
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a standardized method for determining the environmental effects of a product, service or process. Its principles are presented in the standards ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. In the life cycle assessment of construction, the life cycle of a building is defined as consisting of several phases:
Standardization creates a harmonized, mutually agreed way of producing environmental information for the environmental impact assessment of construction and produces common, European rules of the game for the environmental statements of construction products.
The work also removes barriers to trade both in the EU's internal market and internationally. It is important that, for example, environmental reports prepared in Finland can be used in other countries without additional requirements and vice versa.
They also want to develop calculation rules that use the environmental statements of construction products as input for environmental impact assessment covering the entire life cycle of the building level. The goal is important because the life cycle of the building is exceptionally long and there are several factors to consider.
Standardization is also aimed at
- defining commonly used indicators at both the building product and building level
- determining criteria for functional equivalence, as only functionally equivalent buildings can be compared with each other
- generally improving the credibility and usability of life cycle assessment based on LCA in the environmental impact assessment of buildings
- increasing understanding of the application of life cycle assessment to buildings, so that instead of comparing individual building products, building product level information would be used as part of a building level assessment covering the entire life cycle, with building products acting as part of the building
- increasing the understanding of the interrelationships between the environmental impacts of the different phases of the life cycle of the building (the building products used in it).