Sustainable Design Assessments and BESS reports
Sustainable Design Assessments, more commonly known as SDAs, are a requirement for residential and commercial projects of certain sizes and are assessed by a specialist at your local council upon completion.
That is the technical terminology for what an SDA is, but in more simple terms it is an extension of an energy rating, or energy assessment that focuses on how your residential or commercial project impacts the occupants of the project (yourself or a tenant) as well as the surrounding urban landscape or environment, which is why local council are involved in assessing this. It functions very closely to most town planning applications (for more on town planning, click here) in that an application is submitted to local council showing how your project complies with relevant energy and SDA requirements.
Some examples of the parts of a project that are impacted by an SDA includes appliances and water fixtures (taps, showers ect), waste disposal, landscaping and lawns, stormwater systems and much more. Ideally a compliant development uses very little water and electricity, including the use of solar panel systems to create a more green development. A sustainable design assessment in essence is in fact assessing how sustainable your design is for the future, thus the name.
More on BESS reports, what are their purpose
So we have discussed what an SDA is and why it is required, but what is a BESS report and how does it fit into the process?
BESS stands for Built Environment Sustainability Scorecard, and it is exactly that. BESS is an online tool used by professionals such as us to assess your residential or commercial development to ensure it complies with your local councils SDA requirements. The result is you get a BESS score, a percentage of anything between 0 and 100, 50 percent is the normal passing mark.
The BESS assessment can be broken down into several criteria, some having more impact on your score than others. Some of these criteria include the before mentioned items, water usage, electricity usage, waste disposal and recycling, even items such as bicycle racks all have an impact on your BESS score.
The BESS tool was created by and is maintained by an organization known as CASBE, which stands for Council Alliance for a Sustainable Built Environment. For more information on CASBE and the history of BESS you can view their website by clicking here.