Combined database for LCC, LCA and life-cycle quality

The focus of the research project “life cycle im-provement of the building quality” is to develop, analyze and evaluate methods to assess planning decisions about their consequences on the life time of a building. The project has two main outputs. One is the creation of a common database on building life cycle data; the other is a comprehensive guideline on sustainable building. The comprehensive guideline is programmed as web oriented database and is structured as a dynamic matrix. The vertical trace follows the five chronologic phases of the lifecycle of a building: concept, planning, construction, utilization, demolation/recycling. The horizontal columns are called “layers” and help to detail the topics (LQG 2010). The second layer allows to give the main phase more precision. With the third layer you can select topics like “project management, energy, building biology, building environmental impact, economy. In the fourth layer some important informations help to get an overview and under-standing for the challenges. These descriptions should be for people with lower experience in sus-tainable buildings. The fifth layer gives deeper in-formation to a specific topic. Here for example guidelines can be found, how to carry out quality testing methods. The sixth layer provides the space for references, important links or documents such as reports, that are available without copyright. The focus of the common database will lie on LCC- and LCA- Data. As the approaches to LCC are vari-ous, the calculated LCC are also very different and the market does not trust the calculated figures yet. Therefore two main improvements are suggested: The usage of all given information and the estab-lishment of continuous and constantly narrowing calculations similar to the investment calculation, which is getting more and more accurate during the planning process. The first improvement is achieved via consequently using regression analysis instead of mean values to evaluate benchmarking data (Schrag 2011). The latter is achieved through a framework, where different benchmarking pools can be used and the calculated results can not only be compared to each other but also be combined with more detailed calculations for specific building elements. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a useful tool to describe life cycle characteristics of products, ser-vices, or entire systems from an environmental point of view. Environmental assessments of buildings are often focused on the production of building components. In order to optimize common building types with from an environmental perspective, a Life Cycle Assessment of the whole building is necessary. All relevant life cycle stages are accounted for, starting with resource extraction, the manufacturing of materials and the building itself, continuing with the use and maintenance stage, and ending with the consideration of the End-of-Life stage. Furthermore the consequences of different allocation methods for recycling have been analyzed (Piringer 2010). As LCC and LCA prediction is especially im-portant for new building elements, the development of different new energy saving facades is part of the project and the application of the methods on these new facades will be shown. As both of these Anal-yses need a calculation of the energy demand, the data are to be accomplished with the data from the energy performance certification. The comprehensive guideline and the data base will be placed finally in an internet portal, which shall give pubic and quick access to the scientific data. A first prototype within excel has been used to show how to evaluate two different facades in an example. As the LCC and LCA calculations are based on an energy certificate, the tool is called enhanced energy certificate.