by jbs041209 j d3 — April 20, 2009—Digital Realty Trust has adopted the recently developed BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) Datacentre format as a basis for the design of its buildings throughout the world, anticipating significant environmental and cost savings.
The new plan sets high standards for the design and construction of data centers. It was piloted on a facility in southeast England that has now successfully achieved the first BREEAM Excellent rating for a building of its type.
“We have created the new scheme using the BREEAM Bespoke methodology as the development framework to take account of the rise in interest in applying BREEAM to more specialist buildings. By working with industry leaders like Digital Realty Trust we are able to ensure that these new standards incorporate ‘real world’ experiences,” says Paul Gibbon, Director of Sustainability at BRE Global.
“The advantage of using BREEAM Bespoke for this is that it reduces the cost of assessments and provides a ready-made set of criteria against which developers, designers, and clients can assess their buildings. We will be refining the Datacentre scheme over the first 12 months of its operation following feedback from actual assessments, and in time these specialist schemes will become part of the standard suite for BREEAM,” adds Gibbon.
BREEAM Bespoke was first developed in 2000 for buildings not covered by the mainstream BREEAM assessment standards such as Offices, Retail, Healthcare, and Education. This model of BREEAM development may also be applied in the future to other specialized building types such as hotels, railway stations, fire stations, visitor centers, and sports facilities.
For more information visit the BREEAM Web site.
