I’m a final year Architectural Technologist student presently compiling a report that aims to highlight the importance of Life Cycle Assessment within the construction industry. As part of the report I want to analyse the life cycle impact of some of today’s MMC techniques.

My understanding is that the purpose of the BRE Green Guide is to allow specifiers to compare various construction materials and build ups. In thinking this I thought it would be straight forward to compare fired clay blocks, hemp blocks, ICF, light gauge steel build up and ModCell. I don’t have the time or word count to do the comparison in any great depth but I thought by using the Green Guide I could compare the 13 category A-E ratings. However, this is proving near impossible to do!


I have found ICF build ups and Light gauge steel build ups on the green guide online but no data is given on embodied carbon or recycled content (as it is for all the listings in the printed green guide to specification)
I have found commissioned BRE environmental profiles for Kingspan TEK SIPs and Ziegel Thermoplan blocks but these don’t convert the numeric/graphical findings into green guide ratings.

I’m finding it very difficult to find a common grounding. Do most of us find the Green Guide a very incomplete, hard to navigate resource? Or am I missing something?