Sustainability assessment of office buildings in Brazil: Guidelines and methodological basis

Life-cycle analysis concepts, originally developed for environmental evaluation of industrialised products were the groundwork of most methodologies developed for environmental assessment of buildings which emerged in the 90's as part of local strategies to accomplish Agenda 21´s targets, established on the UNCED held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Nowadays, each European country - as well as the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and Hong Kong - has its own assessment system. All of these methods share the common goal to stimulate market demands for higher environmental performance levels. All of them deal exclusively with the environmental dimension of sustainability. This work aimed to demonstrate the hypothesis that it is neither appropriate nor sufficient to import existing environmental assessment methods for evaluation of Brazilian office buildings, and that a more efficient and coherent approach is to develop a method according to Brazilian priorities, conditions and constraints. The methodology discussion of existing assessment systems and the case studies performed demonstrated that (1) it is not possible to copy, translate or apply a foreign method in any context but the one it was created for, and that even the most flexible among the available assessment tools faces several practical difficulties to be applied in Brazil; (2) it is paramount to develop a method that adequately considers Brazilian priorities, conditions and constraints. For thispurpose, it is necessary to experience an awareness and maturation process in Brazil similar to those that generated environmental assessment methods, but with the broader challenge of widening the scope for carrying out sustainability assessments. ) Once the veracity of the initial hypothesis was demonstrated, the second part of this work was dedicated to guidelines proposal; constitution of methodology basis; and to start the development of a method to evaluate the sustainability of Brazilian office buildings throughout their life-cycle. In the proposed model, system limits were set to focus on building production and use, as well as the evaluation of the agents involved in the enterprise's cycle, starting by the assessment of the building contractor, as a first step to stimulate the necessary cultural change and a consistent movement towards more sustainable market practices. The assessment framework was built on an agenda for sustainable construction in Brazil; on available instruments for integrated evaluation of environmental, social and economic aspects; and on the analysis of related international methods and standards. This framework and an exhaustive indicators list were submitted for appreciation of construction stakeholders in the State of São Paulo. The framework reached a high consensus level and the analytic hierarchy process proved to be a useful alternative to derive weighting factors. The consultation process also made clear that theBrazilian market is not prepared to be evaluated against a sophisticated method in the short term. A simplified model and a gradual implementation strategy are then proposed, casting some light on future developments needed.