The relation between the adoption of sustainable measures and the composition of an environmental assessment tool for buildings

Owing to a general perception of resource efficiency and due to the fact that the construction industry is traditionally a large user of natural resources, the necessity to design buildings with a low environmental impact is increasing. In the last decade many tools were developed to calculate the environmental impact of buildings and many measures came available to make buildings more sustainable. However, not many papers address the influence of the composition of the assessment tool on the adoption decision of its user. In this research an assessment tool named GreenCalc was used to value and to improve the sustainability of an office building. To this end, more than one hundred and forty civil engineering students were involved as users of this tool. One group of students was asked to lower the environmental impact of the building with help of GreenCalc and another group was asked to do the same thing using a newer version named GreenCalc+. By using two different versions of the tool it is possible to reflect on the impact of the structure of the tool and the preferences of the students for particular techniques or measures. The most and least favourable aspects, and the way the assessment tool can stimulate the use of certain techniques, are addressed.