For the purposes of BREEAM, sister companies or parent companies cannot be considered as third parties. To be classed as an independent third party, there must be no professional connection or relationship between the LCA consultant/energy assessor, or their company, and the verification body.
The third-party verifier must be independent of the LCA or energy assessor and demonstrate impartiality (for general principles, see ISO 17029). To qualify as a third party, the verifier must belong to an organisation not involved in the project and must not provide advice to the project, as this could compromise their impartiality during verification.
