Why hire a BREEAM sustainability consultant?

A BREEAM sustainability consultant can make all the difference between a smooth journey to certification and one that’s filled with missed credits and expensive design changes. They provide the technical insight, strategic direction, and coordination needed to obtain your target rating, without impacting your budget or project schedule.

In this guide, we explore the roles and responsibilities of a BREEAM sustainability consultant, and explain how engaging with one early on can maximise your overall rating.

A BREEAM sustainability consultant acts as your dedicated strategic advisor, technical coordinator, and problem solver. They support you through every stage of your project to reduce the risk of lost credits and avoid any costly issues later down the line.

Rather than treating BREEAM as a tick-box exercise after your building has already been designed, a consultant works alongside your project teams to ensure that the criteria for certification is built into every planning and design decision. 

A BREEAM sustainability consultant is typically responsible for:

• Reviewing your project during the early planning stages to help you set a realistic and achievable BREEAM target
• Helping you develop a clear credit strategy in line with the latest BREEAM scheme requirements
• Coordinating with architects, M&E engineers, cost consultants, and contractors to ensure that every team is aligned
• Tracking evidence and carrying out gap analysis to identify risks early on and avoid any last-minute issues
• Providing clear and practical guidance throughout the design stage, post-construction review, and final certification

Avoid risk and late design changes

Often, projects address sustainability too late in the process. Many BREEAM credits are influenced by choices made early on regarding the site layout, building form, daylighting, energy strategy, and materials. Once these decisions have been fixed, it can be expensive to make changes.

A BREEAM sustainability consultant helps you identify these requirements from the outset and ensure that you make key design choices with sustainability in mind. This reduces the risk of non-compliance and avoids costly rework.

Keep your costs under control

BREEAM doesn’t have to add unnecessary cost to your project. If you make the right design decisions the first time around, it becomes much easier to secure BREEAM credits rather than relying on expensive bolt-on measures.

A BREEAM sustainability consultant will help you focus your time and budget to the areas where it will deliver the greatest value by:

• Identifying which credits are achievable with minimal cost
• Pinpointing which credits you should invest additional resources into
• Advising you on which credits might not be appropriate for your project

This will ensure that your budget is used efficiently and helps you avoid spending money on measures that will deliver little value.

A smoother journey to certification

The BREEAM process can feel complex, particularly when requirements change between different scheme versions. A sustainability consultant will manage the entire process on your behalf, helping to guide the project through each stage and ensuring that your team clearly understands every requirement.

By managing every piece of evidence and coordinating your submissions, a consultant helps to reduce pressure on your design team and improves the likelihood of achieving your target rating first time.

Ensure your design team is aligned

To achieve a high BREEAM rating, you need to ensure your entire project team is working together. 

A BREEAM sustainability consultant acts as a central point of contact and ensures that everyone understands what is required of them and when. This ensures that the BREEAM requirements are built into each team member’s role from the outset and that sustainability is considered within every design and construction decision, making the pathway to achieving your desired BREEAM rating much smoother.

Clear advice based on the latest BREEAM standards

The BREEAM standards change regularly, with the latest version placing more emphasis on building performance, resilience, and long-term outcomes. 

When you work with a BREEAM sustainability consultant, you’ll receive clear, up-to-date advice based on the latest UK schemes. This helps to remove guesswork and reduces the risk of getting requirements wrong, so you can rest assured that your project is being assessed correctly from early design through to final certification.

At Encon Associates, we offer expert BREEAM advisory services for the full range of schemes to help you achieve your desired rating. Our team of BREEAM consultants in the UK have 18+ years of experience in supporting developers and project managers throughout the entirety of the BREEAM assessment process, from the initial pre-assessment through to the final certification, ensuring that the requirements for certification are clearly understood and effectively delivered at every stage.

By working closely with your project teams and identifying risks early, we help you avoid missed credits, reduce uncertainty, and maintain control throughout the process. We’re exceptionally proud to have never missed a targeted rating, and are confident that we can help you achieve the outcome your project requires.

Contact us to discover how our BREEAM assessment support could benefit your project.