Building Documentation Survey Indicates Danish Building Sector S Need for a Material Declaration

henninglarsen.com

Building documentation survey indicates Danish building sector’s need for a material declaration

29 august 2017

Martha Lewis

In connection with an initiative from Sustainable Build, Henning Larsen has conducted an industry wide survey to investigate the status of building material documentation in Denmark. Sustainable Build is an innovation project focused on increasing productivity within the sustainable building industry, and is supported by Industriens Fond, Dansk Arkitektur Center and founding partners, Pension Danmark, Region Midtjylland, Tarkett, NCC and Henning Larsen Architects. As part of Sustainable Build’s efforts to encourage transparency and traceability of building materials, the Task Force on Materials is working to establish a building material declaration, or a material pass. The motivation for the survey was to ensure that a new Danish material declaration would not duplicate existing building product documentation. Results of the survey indicate that there is a clear demand for additional documentation, that the existing material documentation does not satisfy the needs of the sustainable building industry. The responses to the survey indicate that a simpler, more effective and thorough product documentation is necessary in order to promote heathy and environmental respectful buildings. Sustainable Build’s Task Force has developed a Danish materials declaration, which would support DGNB certification. The transparency provided by material declarations is a great advantage for clients, enabling them to ensure a healthy indoor climate for users and for construction workers. This is particularly relevant when it comes to renovations and to future recycling of the material resources in the building. Working together with the Swedish declaration system, a system that has been active for 25 years, Sustainable Build aims to have a Danish declaration up and running within the next year.

The survey questioned whether the existing building product documentation fulfills the needs of consultants today. Particular emphasis was given to documentation necessary to fulfilling requirements in sustainable building certification programs, such as DGNB and LEED. The survey was open for 12 days in May 2017 and received over 100 responses from architects, contractors, clients and manufacturers. Response to the survey came primarily from consultants (53%), see Figure 1. For 73% of respondents, certification was the primary activity necessitating information from building product documentation.

Figure 1 – Survey participation Of the existing building product documentation, the documents most used by the respondents are the following four:  Technical data sheet  Safety data sheet  CE mærkning (DoP)¨  Environmental Product Declaration (EPD)

In order to assess the current material documentation, respondents evaluated the relative ease of finding specific product relevant data required by the DGNB or LEED systems. The following six specific product related certification requirements were assessed by 46- 58% of respondent as being “possible but time consuming” to document, with a lesser percentage (27 – 46%) indicating the same six requirements were “difficult to impossible” to document.

Figure 2 – Survey questioning relative ease of documenting specific material related requirements

Response to the following three certification requirements indicated a smaller percentage considering it “possible, but time consuming” to document product content, and a higher percentage concluding that these 3 are “difficult to impossible” to document.

Figure 3 – Survey questioning relative ease of documenting specific material related requirements henninglarsen.com

In conclusion, respondents were asked whether the existing forms of material documentation in Denmark were adequate to fulfill the requirements of certification systems. 24% responded positively, and 76% reported that the existing documentation was not sufficient to certify sustainable buildings. In the comment responses, there is a demand for more published Danish EPDs, for transparency and for a standardization way of presenting the information. The comments are heavily weighted in favor of more documentation, in particular more readily available information detailing the products’ content. The Sustainable Build Task Force is currently working on an implementation plan for the Danish Building Declaration. Raw Survey Data

1. 1. Hvilken byggevare dokumentation anvender du? - Som entreprenør

2. Som entreprenør – Andet: · EU blomst · EC1

3. 1. Hvilken byggevare dokumentation anvender du? - Ved salg og indkøb

4. henninglarsen.com

5. 1. Hvilken byggevare dokumentation anvender du? - Som rådgiver

Som rådgiver – Andet: · Miljøblomsten, EMICODE · Giscode · Dokumentation for brand · Healthy Product Declaration · Code of conduct / CSR samt FSC/PEFC certificering · HPD, C2C, CASRN, GreenScreen, LCA (ISO 14044) · LOUS / REACH / (ETA) · Flere udlandske

7. 1. Hvilken byggevare dokumentation anvender du? - Som producent

Som producent – Andet: · ETA · M1 · Cradle2Cradle · C2C · M1, C2C, mfl 8. 1. Hvilken byggevare dokumentation anvender du? - Som bygherre / driftsherre

9. Som bygherre / driftsherre – Andet: · Ökobaudat

2. Hvordan er din oplevelse af at finde generelt oplysninger om byggevarer?

3. Hvordan er din oplevelse når du søger yderligere specifikke oplysninger, for eksempel i forbindelse med certificeringskrav? henninglarsen.com

10. 4. I hvilken sammenhæng har du fremadrettet behov for at finde frem til information om byggevarer? I forbindelse med . . .

12. 5a. Har du haft brug for konkret dokumentation af opløsningsmidler, VOCer eller uønskede stoffer?

14. 5b. Vil du fremadrettet have behov for konkret dokumentation af opløsningsmidler, VOCer eller uønskede stoffer? (Hvis ”nej”, kan du springe videre til nr. 7) 15. 6. Som et specifikt eksempel, er der behov for dokumentation i forbindelse med certificeringskrav (DGNB, LEED,BREEAM,osv). Indiker, hvor nemt / svært det er at finde frem til de nødvendige oplysninger om byggevare produkternes indhold.

16. 7. Er de eksisterende former for byggevaredokumentation fyldestgørende nok til at kunne dokumentere krav ifm. certificerede bygninger? henninglarsen.com

17. 9. For at minimere fremtidigt ressourceforbrug bliver ”Design for disassembly” et fokus i byggebranchen. Hvad er de største forhindringer for at kunne udføre effektive design for disassembly?

18. Samlet status

Svarprofil

Entreprenør 16 Indkøb 11 Rådgiver 69 Producent 19 Bygherre 16 Total 131

Forskel mellem antal gennemført surveys (104) og antal svarprofiler (131) forklares ved at nogen har oplyst svaret under to profiler inden for det samme survey.