Your Project Parameters are essentially default settings for your Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) calculations. They ensure consistent and accurate results across your project.
These rules apply to all designs within your project, but you can always adjust them later if needed.
Key parameters
LCA Parameters
Service Life (Influences B4-B5 emissions)
The service life determines how long different materials in your building are expected to last. Read more about service life here. You can choose from several options:
Technical Service Life: How long materials last in good condition (recommended default)
Commercial Service Life: A shorter lifespan for materials in settings like retail or hotels where interiors are replaced more frequently.
Product-Specific Service Life: Uses data from Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), also suitable for calculations such as DGNB and E+C-.
Country-Specific Service Life Options:
RICS Default Service Life: Uses service life values from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) guidance.
RICS V2 Default Service Life: Uses service life values from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS 2nd Edition) guidance.
Norway DFØ Default Service Life: Use service life values from DFØ guidelines.
Transportation Distance (Influences A4 emissions)
This sets the default distance and transport mode for materials traveling from the manufacturer to your building site. Choose the region that best matches your project location (Nordic, European, UK, etc.) for more accurate transportation impact calculations.
Nordic - Setting for projects in the Nordics. Will have distances typical for transport in the Nordics and default modes of transportation.
Norway - DFØ - Setting for BREEAM NOR v6.1 projects. Will have distances and transportation methods based on DFØ guidelines.
European - Setting for projects throughout Europe. Will have distances typical for transport in the Europe and default modes of transportation.
UK - Setting for projects in the UK. Will have distances typical for transport in the United Kingdom and default modes of transportation.
UK - RICS - Setting for RICS or GLA projects in the UK. Will have distances typical for transport according to RICS and specific modes of transportation.
Canadian - Setting for projects in Canada. It will have distances typical for transport in Canada and default modes of transportation.
US (miles) - Setting for projects in the US. Will have distances typical for transport in the US and default modes of transportation.
Australian - Setting for projects in Australia. Will have distances typical for transport in Australia and default modes of transportation. Several specific modes of transportation are available for Australia as well which can be manually selected in the building materials query.
Global - Setting for any project that is not covered by any of the above regions. Will have global average distances and modes of transport. This may not be accurate for every project location on the globe, and therefore, we recommend at minimum updating the transport distances.
Material Manufacturing Localisation (Influences A1-A3 emissions)
Material localisation adjusts the environmental impact of materials based on where they were manufactured. It accounts for differences in energy sources used in different regions. We use a data regionalisation methodology, according to CEN/TR 15941:2010, to adjust the emissions to match local manufacturing conditions. Recommended for BREEAM calculations. You can learn more on this topic in our related article: Using Materials Manufacturing Localisation
Options include:
v2.1 (recommended) - The current recommended version of our localisation method.
v2.0 and v1.0 - Earlier iterations of our localisation method.
Disabling material localisation - Use with care, uses the original production emissions for each EPD. One Click LCA generics will still be localised as these are modeled with world or European average energy emissions.
You will have the option to change the chosen electricity profile, which causes the data to be localised using a different electricity mix, which will likely have a different emission factor. By default, the latest electricity profile is already selected.
End-of-Life Calculation Method (Influences C1-C4 & D phase emissions)
This determines how the environmental impacts of materials are calculated at the end of their life (demolition, recycling, etc.). This does not affect tools that have mandated EOL methods like DGNB or IMPACT. You can learn more on this topic in our related article: End-of-Life Scenarios for Construction Products
Material-locked: Provides grouped end-of-life emissions that cannot be changed.
Market Scenarios: Offers more detailed end-of-life emissions based on material type and current market practices (recommended).
EPD EOL Scenario: Uses end-of-life data from EPDs if available.
Country-specific end-of-life scenarios: Offer default settings for specific countries.
Global
Japan
Denmark
United Kingdom - RICS V2
End-of-life energy recovery (module D) substituted energy mix (only for Market scenarios)
Default settings based on your earlier chosen country settings and LCA parameter settings can be manually changed if required. Only affects module D.
Expert license users can adjust the end-of-life modeling if the calculation tool does not mandate an EOL method. This additional setting is explained further in the following article: User-Adjustable End-of-Life Modelling
Country-Specific Site Wastage (Influences A5 emissions)
This setting generates automatic wastage percentages in the tools that support this. We have options for:
Global wastage scenarios
United Kingdom
Norway
LCC parameters
To set up LCC parameters, start by selecting your project country. This will automatically fill in default values for:
Exchange Rate: Currency exchange rate against the Euro.
Hourly Labor Rate (Worker): Average hourly cost for a low-skilled worker.
Hourly Labor Rate (Craftsman): Average hourly cost for a high-skilled worker.
You can read more about the LCC method and data here.