Development of RIBA sub-process to assist reduction of building life cycle impact: integration of RIBA workstage with EU EIA legislation and ISO14040

Lack of attention to the early design process in relation to Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has lead to an unsustainable built environment. Often building auditing/monitoring utilising EIA and Life Cycle Cost Assessment (LCCA) tools are used after the completion of the project, when it is too late to influence the design, materials or components to be used. A sub-processes focusing on environmental issues at early design process based on the UK construction process guideline- Royal Institute of British Architect (RIBA) work stages has been developed. The sub-process is an extension of RIBA work stage and intended to be used by project environmental analyst in parallel with the RIBA work stage. Outputs from the proposed sub-process will be a useful data for EIA analyst to carry out an EIA for the project. This paper reports the development of RIBA sub-processes that are based on RIBA work stages A-H and associate these processes with the EIA procedure of European EIA Legislation and the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) procedures of ISO14040. As an outcome, this sub-process will be a useful reference for the Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry to enable the utilisation of good practice in the early design stage processes.