BREEAM-NL

BREEAM-NL (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) is a method for assessing the sustainability of buildings through qualitative weighting. The following components will be taken into account: energy use, land use and ecology, the construction process, water use, health and comfort, waste, pollution, transport, and materials.

Credits can be earned on each of the nine components. A relatively low score on one component can be compensated by an (extra) high score on another component, because the overall score counts. This total is expressed by: Pass, Good, Very Good, Excellent or Outstanding.

Besides new construction, DGBC (the Dutch Green Building Council) provides a sustainability label for existing construction and use, and for area development.

For the materials component, points can be obtained for the credit Mat 5: Substantiated provenance of materials. For steel products 1.5 points can be obtained, provided that evidence of origin can be produced. An ISO14001 certificate is considered sufficient evidence.

The ISO14001 certificates of various products from a few steel producers are available:

ArcelorMittal
Bergara (Spain)
Dabrova (Poland)
Belval (Luxembourg)
Differdange (Luxembourg)
Ostrava (Poland)

These companies produce steel beams (including HE, IPE, U, and SFB profiles).

Corus
IJmuiden (Netherlands)

Corus produces strip used for the production of roofs, sidings and sandwich panels.

Salzgitter
Peine (Germany)

Salzgitter produces steel beams (HE, IPE, U, SFB etc.)

A brochure is available in the downloads section with some BREEAM guidelines. The publication is intended for the British BREEAM, but is also partly applicable to BREEAM-NL.