Session: Green Buildings I

Automated Building LCA
Delwyn Gloria Jones,^*   Australian CRC for Construction Innovation
Peter Scuderi,   Australian CRC for Construction Innovation
Jennifer Rose Tobias,   CIFE, Stanford University

Buildings make very significant internal, local and global environmental impacts. But conventional information technology for building Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to assess such impacts has severe time, cost and communications limitations. These limitations restrict delivery of sufficiently meaningful LCA information to effectively support the broad-ranging practical decision-making needed to enhance building sustainability.

The Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation (CRC CI) has developed and trialled novel decision-support tools for use by Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) practitioners. LCADesign is one such tool that automates building LCA by exploiting global industry foundation class (IFC) data transfer protocols.

The automated take off from IFC compliant 3D CAD models provides real-time LCA of building designs to AEC as well as LCA practitioners aiming for more sustainable project outcomes. The building supply-chain Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) that informs LCADesign was originally developed on top of one compiled by an Australian Government for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. To facilitate wide LCA and AEC practitioner acceptance LCADesign will also allow users to plug in other LCI using Simapro software.

The purpose of this paper is to outline LCADesign software:

• Development including its application of IFC protocols;
• Testing to ensure development to AEC professional standards;
• User experiences from testing across 21 CRC CI Industry partners and
• Interactions with practitioners in construction projects in three countries.

---