The amount of data needed to gather and manage sustainability assessment of buildings is extremely large. The reason for this is the use of different materials (and the substance flows they are comprised of) and the complexity of systems. On the one hand, this peculiarity is a limitation of sustainability assessments; on the other, national and international institutions have revealed an urgent need to identify the environmental impact of a construction intervention. The European Parliament law n° 305/2011 is an example.

In view of this, FED provides a technologically advanced service, derived from a research experience on the combination of BIM and LCA. In particular, with the following steps, the decision procedure for the sustainability design is oriented on a lifecycle approach, integrating in the BIM models information regarding the environmental impact of individual construction components:

• • Implementation of the BIM model in dedicated software (e.g. “Edificius” by ACCA Software S.p.A).
• • Characterization of the materials and operations for the entire building (including quantities and costs).
• • LCA of single materials and operations.
• • LCA of the building in a BIM environment.
• • Result interpretation through the environmental impact categories.

Feedback of the environmental results for the optimization of the sustainability of the building.