How does BREEAM certification work?
New Construction and In-Use
There are major differences between the New Construction and In-Use approaches. Not only the life stage, but also the method of certification differs.
New Construction occurs upon completion of the building and is permanent. The certificate applies to the standard currently in effect.
In-Use is certified at inception and again every three years from then on (every year with BREEAM-NL!), which requires a project-based approach and follow-up.
Cadis has extensive expertise in both, so feel free to contact us for advice and customized solutions.
Schemas
The BRE group, located in the UK, provides the BREEAM standard around the world. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, there are National Scheme Operators (NSOs) that are independent but apply their own version of the BREEAM standard through a license with the BRE group.
Each schedule is formatted for any combination of the following properties:
- Region: e.g.. International (Belgium, Luxembourg, France, …), UK, USA, BREEAM-NL
- Life stage: New Construction (new construction in NL) or In-Use
- Scope: e.g.. Commercial, utility, residential, …
- Version number: e.g.. V6.1.1 where 6 is the major version number, 1 is a significant update on 6.0.0 and the last 1 was a minor update on 6.1.0 (previously these were year numbers such as 2016)
Thus, the full name of the currently applied scheme in Belgium (written on: 29/08/2025) is BREEAM International New Construction Commercial V7.0.0.
Thus, it is always important to know exactly which standard is involved, as they differ in terms of naming issues, as well as requirements.
Categories
In each case, the BREEAM standard contains a series of categories. For example, the category for water is called WHAT, for energy ENE and for pollution POL.
Each category contains some issues in which a number of credits can be earned. Some examples of issues are:
- WAT03: Leak detection on main water line (1 credit)
- ENE02: Energy monitoring (2 credits)
A credit in one category is not worth as much as a credit in another category because all categories are still ultimately weighted based on a weighting factor AND the total number of credits in the category.
For example, in BREEAM New Construction V6.0, each credit in ENE is worth 0.6% of the total score, each credit in POL is worth 0.9%, and each credit in WAT is worth 0.7%!
Score
The final score is determined by the complete addition and weighting of all points, which then produces a qualitative rating:
- Outstanding: > 85%
- Excellent: > 75%
- Very good: > 55%
- Good: > 45%
- Pass: > 30%
An important footnote is that some issues are required as a minimum to achieve a certain score. These are called minimum standards.
WAT02 is a minimum standard to achieve a score of Good. That is, without WAT02, the maximum score that can be achieved is Pass, even if the accumulated score is 90%. In other words, even though WAT02 is only a single credit, any building aiming for high certification must achieve this credit.
