3 General Technical - BREEAM Knowledge Base

Health Product Declarations (HPDs) – Recognition in BREEAM - KBCN1435

BREEAM has considered the merit of Health Product Declarations (HPDs) and recognizes that these could have a future part to play in health-based evaluation approaches for building occupants. We believe that there may be opportunities for HPDs to help project teams and clients make informed decisions towards healthier and safer building products. However, HPDs do not have an assessment methodology informing holistic health and wellbeing and it is currently unclear how these can integrate with other established methods (e.g. product emissions testing, indoor air quality testing, regulations on chemical substances, environmental product declarations and life cycle assessment). While BREEAM does not recognize Health Product Declarations right now, we fully intend to keep this under review as things develop. If you or your project team has a suitable case study that we may refer to, please forward it to BREEAM for review.

Statutory requirements – Conflicting with BREEAM criteria - KBCN1061

Where it can be demonstrated that particular aspects of the design, such as materials or external lighting, have been determined and imposed by a statutory body, such requirements can be deemed to over-ride the BREEAM criteria and compliance can be considered as met for those elements. All other relevant criteria for the Issue or credit must be met. BREEAM does not seek to impose requirements on the project which cannot be met due to statutory requirements. It should, however, be demonstrated that the development meets the criteria as far as practically possible.