AQUA certification system and the design of buildings

Transcription

1 Chapter 6 - Building Sustainability Assessment Tools AQUA certification system and the design of buildings Maria Aparecida Steinherz Hippert Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Mestrado em Ambiente Construído, Juiz de Fora, Brasil aparecida.hippert@ufjf.edu.br Luiz Felipe Dutra Caldeira Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Mestrado em Ambiente Construído, Juiz de Fora, Brasil dutracaldeira@yahoo.com.br ABSTRACT: The construction industry causes great environmental impact by using natural raw materials and delivering products that generate a lot of waste. In order to assess the environmental conditions of buildings, several certification systems are used abroad, and some of them have been adapted to Brazil. This paper aims to describe the Brazilian system AQUA (for office and educational buildings) and analyze its Categories 1 and 7 since the requirements of these categories are more closely related to the way buildings are designed. This system is an adaptation of the 'Haute Qualité Environnementale - HQE' system for Brazil. The research method included a case study conducted at a newly-constructed building of a federal institution. Results show that concern with environmental issues in the design stage is still incipient. However, a number of recommendations could be made in order to contribute to the development of new projects of this institution. 1 INTRODUCTION In recent decades, discussion on environmental protection combined with sustainable development has increased. According to Sattler (2001), concern with sustainable development arose after the occurrence of social problems, environmental degradation and shortage of resources due to the need to offer species (including the human species) a higher quality of life. In Brazil, this topic gained more prominence in 1992 during the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (ECO 92), held in Rio de Janeiro, where a consensus was reached among the various participating nations that strategies for sustainable development should consider environmental aspects integrated with development plans and policies (Silva, 2003). The construction industry is part of this context. This industry has been touted as one of the sectors most responsible for environmental impacts, due to its use of non-renewable, natural raw materials, as well as for creating waste-generating products that often require aggressive adaptation on the sites where they are built (Tobias & Vavaroutos, 2009). According to the Department of Environmental Issues for the State of Sao Paulo (2010), this industry accounts for up to 40% of global CO 2 emissions and, in Brazil, it accounts for the use of 21% of treated water, 42% of all energy generated, and about 60% of the waste produced. Certification systems emerged in an attempt to transform the construction industry according to sustainable concepts, and due to the lack of regulations that could guide and manage activities in the industry in a more responsible manner (Mendler, 2006). These systems thoroughly evaluate requirements in order to encourage and maintain sustainable practices among owners, users and operators, and reduce environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of a building (Lamberts et al. 2010). Performance evaluation supported by certification provides new, similar developments to the project, with the ability to diagnose and indicate where improvements are needed in order to 481

2 Portugal SB13 - Contribution of Sustainable Building to Meet EU Targets achieve greater process, system, and material efficiency, for example. Thus, based on evaluations, it is possible to check the necessary requirements and those which can be further improved (Lamberts et al. 2010). However, in the case of public works this discussion requires the consideration of some specific aspects due to certain limitations of this type of project in comparison to private works. In Brazil, public works are subject to the Bid Law whereby an agreement is only signed after a bidding process is completed in which the company that submits the lowest price wins the bid (Brasil, 1993). On the other hand, the creation of the Support Program for the Restructuring and Expansion of Federal Universities (REUNI) has transformed public universities into construction sites. This program was created by the federal government in order to increase higher education access and retention (MEC, 2011). Based on these facts, this paper aims to describe the Brazilian AQUA certification system and analyze Categories 1 and 7 from among fourteen categories, since these are directly related to the way buildings are designed, in order to help improve new educational building projects at the Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), a participating member of REUNI which is currently under a rapid expansion process 2 THE AQUA CERTIFICATION SYSTEM - HIGH ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY AQUA can be defined as a project management process to achieve environmental quality for new or renovated developments, and can be applied during the building design, creation, or construction stage (Fundação Vanzolin, 2007). AQUA was published in Brazil in October 2007 as a result of the translation and adaptation of the French HQE (Haute Qualité Environnementale). This work was developed by Fundação Vanzolin under a cooperation agreement with Certivéa, responsible for preparing the Referentiel Technique de Certification "Bâtiments Tertiaires - Démarche HQE", which helped create a Technical Reference (TR) for Certification for offices and educational buildings. This reference was structured into two instruments: a reference for the Project Management System (PMS) to assess the environmental management system and a reference for the Environmental Quality of Buildings (EQB) to assess the architectural and technical performance of construction. The EQB is divided into four families encompassing fourteen categories that are further divided into subcategories which, in turn, are broken down into 120 concerns related to environmental challenges. Each concern is represented by one or more indicators, and performance assessment follows both qualitative criteria, based on the description of the measures adopted ('requirement met' or 'requirement not met'), and quantitative criteria, based on assessment methods, measurements and estimates (good, high standard or excellent). For the "Comfort" families, under the "Sanitary Quality of the Air" and "Environmental Sanitary Quality" categories, parameters to achieve certification change depending on the different buildings. Currently, there are different technical certification references for "Offices and Educational Buildings", "Hotels" and "Residential Buildings." The relationship between families and categories are shown in Table Category 1 - Relationship between Buildings and Their Surroundings This category addresses how a project development considers data from previous analyses of its deployment site, and the impact it causes on the environment in terms of community and neighbors. This category also addresses the impact of comfort and health of outdoor spaces of the project on the users of the land: outdoor environmental comfort, outdoor acoustic comfort, outdoor visual comfort, and healthy outdoor spaces. Category 1 subcategories and concerns are shown in Table

3 Chapter 6 - Building Sustainability Assessment Tools Table 1. Families and categories of EQB Families Categories Green-building 1. Relationship between Buildings and Their Surroundings 2. Integrated Choice of Products, Systems and Building Processes 3. Low Environmental Impact Construction Site Management 4. Energy Management 5. Water Management 6. Use and Operation Management of Buildings 7. Maintenance - Continuity of Environmental Performance Comfort 8. Hygrothermal Comfort 9. Acoustic Comfort 10. Visual Comfort 11. Olfactory Comfort Health 12. Environmental Sanitary Quality 13. Sanitary Quality of the Air 14. Sanitary Quality of the Water Table 2. Category 1 - Relationship between Buildings and Their Surroundings. Subcategory Concerns 1.1 Implementing a Ensuring consistency between implementation of a project development on-site and the community policy in terms of land project development on-site for a sustainable urban de Managing means of transportation and encouraging those less arrangement and territorial sustainable development velopment polluting Preserving the ecosystem and biodiversity Preventing the risk of flooding in susceptible areas and limiting 1.2 Quality of outdoor spaces for users 1.3 Impacts of a building on the neighborhood the spread of pollutants Creating suitable outdoor environment comfort Creating suitable outdoor acoustic comfort Creating suitable visual comfort Ensuring healthy outdoor spaces Ensuring the neighborhood s right to sunlight Ensuring the neighborhood s right to bright light Ensuring the neighborhood s right to views Ensuring the neighborhood s right to health Ensuring the neighborhood s right to peace 2.2 Category 7 - Maintenance - Continuity of Environmental Performance This category is directly related to conservation and maintenance actions to ensure those efforts that have already been undertaken in other categories. According to the TR, good maintenance is identified by the following qualities: "optimized maintenance needs; low environmental and sanitary impact of the products and procedures used; guaranteed execution in all situations; monitoring methods that allow continuity of performance; access to equipment and systems," (Fundação Vanzolin, 2007). Thus, technical provisions to maintain environmental performance are concentrated and divided into three concerns: availability of means to monitor and control performance; simplicity of design and limitation of disturbance caused to occupants due to malfunction or preventive or systematic operation for conservation/maintenance; and easy access, to guarantee appropriate cleaning/conservation/maintenance. Category 7 subcategories and concerns are shown in Table 3. 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Research begins with a literature review on the subject focusing on the Brazilian AQUA system, followed by a case study. The research methodology can then be classified as descriptive, with a qualitative nature, based on a case study strategy. A data collection document was created containing 353 questions that include the fourteen categories of the system based on the TR for Certification, Service Industry Buildings, AQUA Process for Offices/Educational Buildings (Fundação Vanzolin, 2007). These questions refer to measures that should be taken to meet the AQUA system requisites, and came from the concerns and examples of measures as presented in the reference for each of its subcategories. 483

4 Portugal SB13 - Contribution of Sustainable Building to Meet EU Targets The recently built Engineering School facility of the UFJF. Data was collected through onsite visits, document analyses, interviews with the project company which won the bidding process (responsible for the architectural design and hiring of complementary projects) and UFJF's infrastructure department. The completed questionnaire with all of the responses can be found in Caldeira (2013), while this article includes the responses to Category 1 (Relationship between Buildings and Their Surroundings) and Category 7 (Maintenance - Continuity of Environmental Performance). Sample questions are shown in Table 4 for the concern. Table 3 - Category 7 - Maintenance - Continuity of Environmental Performance Subcategory Concerns 7.1 Continuity of Providing the necessary means to monitor and control performance during use and operation of the building heating and cooling system performance disturbance caused to occupants during maintenance interven Ensuring simplicity of design for easy maintenance and limited tions Designing the building for easy access for conserva- 7.2 Continuity of ventilation system performance 7.3 Continuity of lighting system performance 7.4 Continuity of water management system performance tion/maintenance interventions during use and operation Providing the necessary means to monitor and control performance during use and operation of the building Ensuring simplicity of design for easy maintenance and limited disturbance caused to occupants during maintenance interventions Designing the building for easy access for conservation/maintenance interventions during use and operation Providing the necessary means to monitor and control performance during use and operation of the building Ensuring simplicity of design for easy maintenance and limited disturbance caused to occupants during maintenance interventions Designing the building for easy access for conservation/maintenance interventions during use and operation Providing the necessary means to monitor and control performance during use and operation of the building Ensuring simplicity of design for easy maintenance and limited disturbance caused to occupants during maintenance interventions Designing the building for easy access for conservation/maintenance interventions during use and operation Table 4 - Concern Designing the building for easy access for conservation/maintenance interventions during use and operation Was accessibility to different elements of the heating and cooling system provided, including air intakes? Were points of access sized so as to allow for the replacement of large elements such as boilers or air conditioning central systems? Were intervention zones sized accordingly around the equipment? Are there lighting and power feeding points where conservation/maintenance practices are to take place? Answers were classified as "Yes" if requirements were met; "No" if requirements were not met; and "Partially" if a requirement did not completely meet a criterion. Additionally, some requirements were considered "Not applicable" in cases where they did not correspond to the configuration of the project under consideration. 4 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS The construction of new buildings at UFJF needs to follow the provisions in the Institution's Master Plan, and because these works are public, they must undergo a bidding process. The work in question was entirely assigned to one company, and the winning company was responsible for development of the projects through execution and delivery of the work. Requirements to meet the AQUA criteria were not included in the bidding process, and therefore the questionnaire was applied by considering the project as completed, i.e., the reality found in the building as it is today. 484

5 Chapter 6 - Building Sustainability Assessment Tools The building studied was located in the midst of existing buildings of the Engineering School, on the fourth university campus plateau. It includes classrooms and support areas such as rest rooms, storage rooms and technical rooms distributed on four stories, plus auditoriums located on the first floor only. The building was built in the traditional construction system, with reinforced concrete, masonry walls, on-site precast ceilings, asbestos roof, and large spanning windows. A location plan of the building on campus and a schematic floor plan of the building can be seen in Figures 1 and 2. Figure 1. Location plan of the building. Figure 2. Floor plan of the building. 4.1 Category 1 - Relationship between the Building and its Surroundings Concerns and refer to managing the means of transportation and ensuring the neighborhood s right to peace, respectively, and because they are not directly related to the design stage of the building project they were not considered in this work. The remaining answers for Category 1 of the TR are shown in Table 1. Table 1 shows that environmental requirements are still only incidentally considered in the project since only 10 "Yes" responses were given. On the other hand, the "Partially" responses, which represent the majority together with the negative answers, are opportunities for recommendations to be followed in the development of new projects focusing on better performance for new educational buildings. For category 1, negative responses refer to the discontinuity of solutions for the preservation of the local biodiversity and ecosystem (the implementation of the building did not consider an increased vegetation area; also, plant species adapted to the climate and terrain were not chosen), and to the fact that disturbances caused by noisy activities were not considered. "Partial" responses refer to the adoption of measures for rational exploitation of locally available net- 485

6 Portugal SB13 - Contribution of Sustainable Building to Meet EU Targets works and resources, the implementation of green areas in the terrain (there was a decrease in the existing green area since it was transferred to a distant location), and measures taken to limit the disturbances caused by wind, rainfall, sun exposure and external noise. "Not applicable" responses refer to the fact that flood risk was not considered since the building is located at a high altitude. Table 1. Category 1 Results Subcategory/Concern Yes No Partially Not applicable Overall Overall Category 7 - Maintenance - Continuity of Environmental Performance Concerns 7.1.1, 7.2.1, and refer to the availability of resources needed to monitor and control performance during use and operation of the building. Because they do not concern the design stage of the building project they were not considered in this work. Results for this category are shown in Table 2. Table 2. Assessment Results for Category 7 Subcategory/Concern Yes No Partially Not applicable Overall Overall Table 2 shows that the number of positive measures taken for easy maintenance outweigh the 'negative' and 'partially' results. The consideration of maintenance during the design phase has been defended in the literature (Antunes & Calmon (2005), Loosemore & Chandra, 2012 and Sanches & Fabrício, 2009). The inclusion of maintenance in the initial stages of a project allows for a better match of activities to be carried out over the life of a building, ensuring its better functioning and use. In this category, the negative response refers to the confinement of pipes, which hinders or impairs maintenance activities. Partial responses are due to maintenance activities without disturbing occupants, access to cooling and ventilation systems, and sector-oriented pipe design. Because it is a small building with simple construction elements, the 'not applicable' responses refer to a lack of building automation systems and cable systems for access to lighting fixtures installed at isolated points, as well as access to thermal insulation elements and water treatment points, since these do not occur in this building. 4.3 Recommendations Regarding the architectural design, based on the 'negative' and 'partially' responses found in the requirement analysis for TR Categories 1 and 7, we recommend that the following measures be 486

7 Chapter 6 - Building Sustainability Assessment Tools taken in new projects to achieve better performance for new buildings to be constructed on the UFJF campus: inclusion of environmental performance requirements in the bidding process. In Brazil, the new performance standard (ABNT, 2013) includes a number of requirements to be met for residential buildings, including smaller ones (up to five floors); an attempt to preserve the local biodiversity and ecosystem, or increase green areas and choice of vegetation adapted to the climate and terrain; survey and consideration of weather conditions to deal with the disturbances caused by winds, rainfall, sun exposure and external noise, in the quest for quality outdoor spaces for users. According to the TR (Fundação Vanzolin, 2007), landscape design is a means to address these various concerns, such as protection against the sun and wind. However, they can be sources of noise or allergies. Furthermore, passive elements of design should be studied such as "brise-soleils" (sun-shading), acoustic barriers, double walls, among others; address accessibility to different elements of the systems and avoid confinement of pipes, in order to facilitate completion of maintenance activities. 5 FINAL CONSIDERATIONS This paper introduced AQUA, the Brazilian system for environmental certification, and analyzed Categories 1 and 7 from among fourteen categories, since these are more closely related to the shape of a building. Subsequently, we conducted a case study for an educational building recently built in a federal public institution, so that we could check its performance against the requirements relative to the form of the project. This building was built by the conventional method (reinforced concrete and masonry walls) following the bidding process required for public works in Brazil, which did not include environmental certification requirements. Results indicate that some measures for implementation of the project and neighborhood impacts could be better considered. On the other hand, most of the maintenance measures have already been met. From this result recommendations were proposed for new projects in order to improve their performance. It should be noted that in the case of public works, demands for better environmental performance should already be included in the bidding process, so that they could be considered in new projects and works. REFERENCES Antunes, G. B. S. & Calmon, J. L Manutenção de Edifícios: Importância no Projeto e Influência no Desempenho Segundo a Visão dos Projetistas. In 8th CONPAT: Proceedings of Latin American Congress on Pathology of Construction, Asunción, Paraguay. Brasil. Presidência da República Lei nº Brasília: Governo Federal. Available (acess: mai/2013). Brasil. Presidência da República Decreto nº Brasília: Governo Federal. Available (acess: out/2011). Caldeira, L. F. D Proposta de Diretrizes para o Projeto de Edificações Públicas com menor Impacto Ambiental: Estudo de caso em um edifício de uma Instituição Federal de Ensino Superior baseado no Referencial AQUA. Juiz de Fora: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ambiente Construído. Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora Fundação Vanzolini Referencial técnico de certificação "Edifícios do setor de serviços - Processo AQUA: Escritórios e Edifícios escolares. São Paulo: Fundação Vanzolini. Available outubro2007.pdf (acess: dez 2012). Lamberts, R., Triana, M. A., Fossati, M. & Batista, J. O Sustentabilidade nas edificações: Contexto internacional e algumas referências brasileiras na área. Florianópolis: Laboratório de Eficiência Energética em Edificações. Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Loosemore, M. & Chandra, V Learning through briefing: For strategic facilities management in the health sector. Built Environment Project and Asset Management. 2. Mendler, S., Odell, W. & Lazarus, M. A The HOK Guidebook to Sustainable Design. New Jersey. 487

8 Portugal SB13 - Contribution of Sustainable Building to Meet EU Targets Sanches, I. D. & Fabrício, M. M A importância do projeto na manutenção de HIS. In VI SIBRAGEC: Proceedings of Simpósio Brasileiro de Gestão e Economia da Construção, João Pessoa: ANTAC. Sattler, M. A., Sedrez, M. M., Rosa, T. F. & Sperb, M. R Aplicação de Tecnologias Sustentáveis em um Conjunto Habitacional de Baixa Renda. Coletânea Habitare. (volume 3). Porto Alegre: ANTAC. Available (acess: mar 2011). São Paulo, Secretaria do Meio Ambiente/Coordenadoria de Planejamento Ambiental Economia Verde: Desenvolvimento, Meio Ambiente e Qualidade de Vida no Estado de São Paulo. São Paulo: SMA/CPLA. Silva, V. G Avaliação da sustentabilidade de edifícios de escritórios brasileiros: diretrizes e base metodológica. São Paulo: Escola Politécnica, Universidade de São Paulo. Tobias, L. & Vavaroutsos, G Retrofitting Office Buildings to be Green and Energy-Efficient: Optimizing Building Performance, Tenant Satisfaction and Financial Return. Washigton, D. C.: Urban Land Institute. 488