In this edition, Josefina speaks to Alfons Ventura of the Spanish Green Building Council who is coordinating a new LIFE Level(s) initiative. The initiative aims to document ten building projects’ experiences of using Level(s) in order to give the European Commission the information it needs to create a set of detailed case studies. The case studies will be a vital resource for building professionals who wish to adopt Level(s) in their working environments.

Which are the organisations taking part in this activity and what is their previous experience with Level(s)?

Our consortium is made up of four Green Building Councils (GBCs), and all of them have a deep understanding of building sustainability performance and lifecycle assessment through their extensive experience working with building certification schemes. They include the Spanish Green Building Council (GBCe), the Danish Green Building Council (DK-GBC), the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB), the Austrian Sustainable Building Council (ÖGNI GmbH).

Most of these GBCs were actively involved in the test phase of Level(s) supporting the beta versions and coordinating the buildings that were tested locally. Plus, the entire More LIFE to Level(s) project Consortium was involved in two studies on market readiness of the buildings sector for the EU Taxonomy Screening Criteria on both Climate Change and Circular Economy, which was an initiative of the Climate Positive Europe Alliance (CPEA).

They will be supported by an advisory board made up of recognised experts who have been involved in the development of Level(s).

It is also worth noting that, throughout the proposal preparation process, the GBCs have already engaged an initial cohort of building owners keen to collaborate by proposing building projects that will apply the Level(s) framework and from whose experience our partners will collect the information relevant for the Commission to prepare the case studies.

In addition, we have involved a Community of Apprenticeship (CoA), which will be made up of stakeholders in the building sector who are already familiar with Level(s) as a reference for their professional practice.

You have identified ten building projects of different kinds, across the EU, to work with the Level(s) indicators. Could you tell readers about how you went about identifying these, give us an overview of them and introduce us to some?

Pioneers using all aspects of Level(s) (the framework itself, the eLearning programme, the calculation & assessment tool, and the related Green Public Procurement recommendations) are mainly users of building sustainability certification schemes (Green Building Rating Systems-GBRS), which are already Level(s) compliant. This means that building projects are assessed simultaneously on the GBRS and the Level(s) framework. The certification process delivers both a sustainability qualification under the system and the option of a verified reporting bundle under the Level(s) framework.

The More LIFE to Level(s) project takes advantage of the DGNB-System and VERDE Certification System, both of which are Level(s)-compliant. Both VERDE and the DGNB-System have been the first GBRS adapted to include the Level(s) indicators as well as other European reference strategies for sustainability and circularity, such as the EU Taxonomy Delegated Act. Together they provide a wide pool of projects, typologies, stakeholders, building cultures, climate regions, public procurement practices, expert auditors and market experience.

Building project developers who are familiar with these GBRS are aware of the Level(s) reporting extension of the certification scheme and are willing to test its usability, performance, and the benefits of sharing a common language and goals. Potential building projects amongst the candidates for VERDE or DGNB certification have therefore been screened and contacted during the proposal preparation process to ensure the number and diversity of buildings required for the case studies. The partners have contacted building owners who have already signed letters of intent to show their support for More LIFE to Level(s).

At this stage we have already received Letters of Intent from 14 projects: 2 of them are in Spain, 4 in Germany, 3 in Austria, 3 in Denmark, 1 in Slovenia and 1 in Italy, 2 of which are existing buildings, 2 are renovation projects, and the rest are new buildings. But the list can be refined, and a more diverse final mix can be achieved. The final 10 projects will be extracted from that list once the agreement is signed and other potential candidates are contacted again.

The selected projects, especially those with aesthetic and/or social as well as environmental values, can also be a source of inspiration and become part of the catalogue of good practice under the New European Bauhaus.

Providing detailed feedback to the European Commission will allow us to prepare case study reports based on real building projects. What will be the key features of these case studies to really support the widespread adoption of Level(s) and what does that mean for your work? What kind of information do you expect to be of major interest for readers of the final case studies to learn more about?

One of the main characteristics of the pool of case studies is probably its diversity — covering different countries, status (new built, renovation or existing) and building typologies, but all applying the same assessment framework.

This means that a harmonisation process has to be carried out to identify the key agents and related data for each step, and their interconnections with each other and with the project. So, we have to create a framework for data collection, which includes data categorisation and harmonisation.

This applied approach, based on real examples from a wide range of real-life situations, is likely to be of great interest to readers. In addition, common lessons learned, highlighting the crucial stages at which key decisions need to be taken, identifying the main risks, the most common mistakes to avoid and the main challenges, be they technical, financial, performance or time-related, will undoubtedly be the hottest topics.

How do you plan to disseminate the results of this work yourselves, and to make the most of the information that you will gather?

The community of users of these two rating schemes (DGNB-System and VERDE), as well as the other rating schemes also compliant with Level(s), will be the initial target audiences for the dissemination, visualisation and learning tasks we are planning. In addition, links and synergies will be explored between the New European Bauhaus national partners and our consortium, so that the dissemination of shared objectives can be broadened. This means that the impact of the activity will go beyond the five countries involved in the building projects, enabling their results to be replicated across Europe.

Various building teams will already be implementing the Level(s) framework by applying one of the two certification schemes (VERDE or DGNB) during the project extension; many people who already have some kind of Level(s) background could take part in the Community of Apprenticeship and attend the planned events to acquire innovative practices for improving sustainability performance. Besides, the Consortium would be able to reach thousands of stakeholders amongst the GBCs’ social media followers and give them key practical learnings and insights on the use of Level(s), and a huge quantity of social media impressions could be reached, targeting a wider sector specific media audience.

Apart from the points we have addressed, are there other aspects of your work that may be of interest to the Level(s) community?

While Level(s) does not include benchmarks or performance targets, the studied buildings will also be certified by DGNB-System or VERDE, who do include ratings and comparisons with reference buildings. Direct impact metrics in the form of energy or emissions reduction, improved quality of life (Level(s) Indicator 4.1 on Indoor air quality and subsequent indicators on comfort areas), or risk and value and other figures will be reported thanks to the complementary data coming from the certification scheme, bridging the gap with the mere reporting from Level(s).

It is foreseen that certification schemes will evolve from rating schemes to become integrated platforms of building performance that report to multiple reference frameworks (technical, financial, marketable), and that they will provide credible thresholds and benchmarks. It appears that such thresholds and reference values may have the potential to extend the scope of Level(s).