ASWL: Approved Standards and Weightings List

BREEAM International schemes are unique because of their flexibility.

The Approved Standards and Weightings List is a record of all local codes and standards that BRE Global has approved to date. The list is periodically updated to reflect recent approvals or withdrawals.

If stated in the manual, local best practice codes and standards can be submitted to BRE Global to substitute the standards described in the criteria in the scheme Technical Manuals. Provided that such standards are equivalent to the BREEAM specified standards, BRE Global will approve them for use in a particular country or region.

Using existing approved standards

A copy of the ASWL being used should be included in every evidence submission for QA.

If the ASWL is being used without proposing any new standards, the ASWL can be submitted to QA at the same time as the rest of the evidence. It is important to notify QA of which standard (international or local) you are using for each issue.

Default standards

Where no appropriate local standard exists, international, European or UK standards can be used by default. UK standards can be found in the UK country tab. No technical query or permission is required.

ASWL versions

The version of the ASWL that is current at the time of registration is the one that is used for assessment. Newer versions released after this can also be used, however older versions before the registration date cannot be used.

For example: if the version current at registration was v33.0, then v34.0 (or any later versions) can be used, but v32.0 (or any earlier versions) cannot be used.

Standard versions

The latest version of referenced standards should always be used. For instance, if ISO 7730:1994 was referenced in the ASWL, but this has been updated to ISO 7730:2005, the newer version is the one used for assessment. No technical query or permission is required.

If a standard has been withdrawn and replaced with a different standard, (e.g. EN 13779:2007 is replaced by ISO 17772-1:2017) this new standard cannot automatically be used. Please see ‘Proposing new standards’ below:

Proposing new standards

New standards cannot be proposed if they are easier to achieve than the BREEAM requirements. Only standards which are equivalent or more rigorous than the BREEAM default standards are considered.

If you wish to propose a new standard which you think is more relevant to the assessment, or if an existing local standard has been replaced:

  1. Check what the proposed standard needs to cover. Go to the ‘BRE G Checks on Standards’ tab in the ASWL and find the requirements that apply to your standard(s).
  2. Input the names of proposed standard(s) in the ‘Proposed National Best Practice Standard / Tool Reference’ (column R) of your country tab. More than one standard can be proposed, if together, they cover our requirements.
  3. Identify the relevant clauses in the standards that show how these standards meet our requirements, and make sure these are clearly marked so they are easy for us to check. If the standard is not in English, translations of the relevant clauses must be provided.
  4. Send the standards and all of the supporting information to us at [email protected] as a technical query for our review. We will need a few weeks to review the information (please check with us for time scales). If there is missing information, or the information is not clearly marked, we might take longer.

If successful, we will send you a revised copy of the ASWL which includes the new standard, and will update this for future versions of the ASWL.

05/08/2020 - Broken link to video removed and replaced with explanatory text
05/07/2017 - Link to video guidance added