Some organizations have designed standards by which to measure a building’s health and efficiency ratings. These ratings focus on the health of the building itself as well as the building’s local and global impacts.

BEPAC

One such program is Canada’s BEPAC (Building Environmental Performance Assessment Criteria) program. This is Canada’s first comprehensive process for measuring the environmental performance of existing and new commercial buildings. It was created as a way to determine a building’s impact on the global, local, and indoor environments. Modeled after the United Kingdom’s BREEAM, this voluntary program was developed at the University of British Columbia in December 1993, and other regions across Canada have developed similar programs since then.

To determine a building’s performance, several factors are taken into account. The environmental criteria evaluated are divided into five primary topics, and within each of these topics are specific criteria. They are:

* Environmental impact of energy use
* Indoor environmental quality
* Ozone layer protection
* Resource conservation
* Site and transportation

The BEPAC Foundation developed a version that enables companies to do an in-house evaluation of their own buildings rather than rely on a third party. It contains a BEPAC document, a program to train users, and software spreadsheets. For more information, click here.