How it Works

LCADesign allows practitioners to make informed decisions on the environmental impact of buildings and their components by providing fast detailed environmental measures for different designs, products and elements. LCADesign meets a growing need from practitioners and regulators for real-time appraisal of design performance against a wide range of sustainability criteria.

It enables building professionals to make informed decisions on the environmental impact of whole building by providing fast detailed environmental measures of different designs products and elements, among the most notable features in LCADesign are …

General Benefits

LCADesign Benefits include:

  • Real-time environmental assessments direct from BIM Models
  • Choice of environmental inventory, damages, impacts and point-score measures
  • Concept model ecoprofiling
  • Detailed design evaluation
  • Comparative ecoprofiling at all levels of design
  • Comprehensive graphical and tabular outputs and;
  • Immediate cost variations
  • Single element through to full building analysis

Technological Advances

LCADesign is a transformational tool as it delivers:

  • Output from comprehensive national building industry supply chain inventory
  • Output in absolute or relative units.
  • Quantitative computation
  • Repeatable consistency
  • Transparent weightings
  • Dimensional relevance
  • Element specific details
  • Comparative profiles
  • Full drill down to detail
  • Gross building ecopoints
  • Objectivity not subjectivity

Life cycle Assessment

LCADesign implements Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for all material in a building plus energy and water use in operation over its design life. LCA applies ISO 14040-43 methods to assess environmental impacts of a building, fabrication or a product by:

  • Establishing a scope and system boundary and compiling an inventory of in and outflows
  • Evaluating potential damages and impacts of flows from cradle to end of life or re-use
  • Interpreting results of all flows, damages and impacts considering the study’s objectives.

For buildings the inventory scope covers resource acquisition, recycling, transport, manufacture, delivery, construction, maintenance and periodic system replacements. Water and energy use in occupancy over a given design life is also included.

Environmental Assessment

LCADesign is optimised to derive, calculate and view results and obtain records of building and product ecoprofiles. Quantities of all components e.g. masonry, metal, glass, polymer and timber come directly from the BIM. This dimensional information is combined with supply chain inventory data to estimate key internationally recognised environmental impact indicators. Externally encoded algorithms calculate the burdens of, benefits from, damages to and impacts on the earth’s carrying capacity and human health. All calculation routines are fully transparent and the inventory, product selections and impact weightings can be manipulated to reflect different site sensitivity, client need or national or corporate supply chain. All data is external to LCADesign

BIM Integration

Building Information Models (BIMs) contain a wealth of detailed information. LCADesign imports this detail using the Industry Foundation Class (IFC) data transfer protocols. This global standard file format is used for defining architectural and construction CAD graphic data. Such virtual modeling allows users to interrogate as well as add data to and manipulate such objects as increasingly intelligent building information models. the IFC protocol is developed by the International Alliance for Interoperability or BuildingSMART, a non-profit, global alliance of the building, construction and software industries with over 650 member organisations in 20 countries.

Life cycle Inventory

The life cycle Inventory (LCI) databases provide details on resource use and emissions generated by supply chain operations during product manufacture including of embodied pollution, water and energy use. The LCI also cover resource use and pollution from material acquisition and transport as well as fuels, energy and water use in building operations. The individual environmental indicators are nested under three main categories of impact: degradation of the physical environment, natural ecosystems and harm to the human population. LCADesign users can drill down into the source of environmental impacts by design element, individual product, assembly or component all the way to the inventory results to find, for example, fuel use and emissions from transport. LCADesign has building product life cycle inventory databases (LCI) available for Australia, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and California. LCADesign also has a materials reference or reasoning rules (RR) database that defines most building elements using the contents of the LCI database. Additional building element definitions can be defined by users or as per quote by our consultants. A complete description of the background of the LCI is available here.

Environmental Profiles

Buildings are essential yet they consume vital resources and generate considerable emissions over their lives. They are major consumers of water and energy resources and also generate significant pollution of communities, air, land and water. For these reasons capability to readily asses low impact design alternatives is the core purpose of LCADesign. Results are calculated against 70 indicators such as:

  • Energy and Fuel use
  • Air and Carbon Pollution
  • Ozone Depletion
  • Climate Change
  • Human Health
  • Ecosystem Quality
  • Eco-Toxins and Waste
  • Resource Depletion
  • Recycled content and
  • Water Pollution.

It is also important to know that LCADesign is a powerful application and needs a robust enviroment to run in. …

Hardware

Minimal requirements are Windows XP, Dual Core Processor,4GB RAM, 128MB Graphics Card and 22" Monitor.

BIM Integration

LCADesign will import Building Information Models (BIM) that comply with the IFC 2.3 standard. This includes output from Autodesk, Archicad & Bentley.