Life cycle assessment as part of the planner's daily routine

The German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) defined Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a core means to assess the sustainability performance of buildings. Among other reasons, this has helped turn LCA into a commonly known approach in the construction sector. It has been around for a number of years for the declaration of the environmental performance of building products. Today, utilizing EPD and applying LCA turns into a regular necessity for a broad range of building planners. It is, however, still a method that is mostly applied from LCA experts, using expert tools. Consequently, significant barriers exist for many planners to include LCA into their regular work, despite the demand for LCA as an assessment basis. If the goal is to create sustainable buildings on a broader range in the future, not only in Germany, but around the world, custom-tailored, easy to use tools are necessary. Yet, such tools only have to be streamlined in the way the user works with them, not in the assessment they perform. This includes that any such tool has to be able to process existing information from the planning process, has to fit into the planner's workflow as seamlessly as possible and needs to require virtually no time for orientation. In addition to that, the tool has to support the use of specific products and consider associated Environmental Product Declarations. Such a tool is currently under development as an internet-based service by the authors' institutions. It will easily support a planner to conduct a building-LCA and document the results in accordance with DGNB requirements. One specific feature is the use of aggregating constructions and the dynamic growing of the underlying catalogue by the user's input. This article outlines the requirements and concepts of this tool