Findings from a survey on the current use of life-cycle assessment in building design

The built environment is facing environmental regulations more ambitious than ever before. In Europe, a law will lead all new buildings to the Nearly Zero-Energy performance level. However, even if a building does not have any energy consumption for its operation phase, it still has embodied impacts. To that end, Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods have been developed and improved since the 1960s. However, LCAs are still not used as a standard practice among the architecture, engineering and construction industry. This study aims to discover the reasons for the low use of life-cycle performance approaches thanks to a web survey targeting practitioners, and to formulate key recommendations to improve their usability. This research reveals the low penetration rate of LCA software among building designers due to their limited efficiency within the design context. The main reasons for this situation are the cost of use, too heavy for the early design stage constraints, and the functionality, which is limited to the environmental assessment. Indeed, practitioners expect much more design support functionalities (multi-criteria approach, exploration mode, etc.). The survey findings aim to support the usability improvement of new LCA-based methods and the research and development of new tools at early design stages.