Trends
Environmental assessment programs for buildings, and the tools that support them, are evolving rapidly, but are not yet fully mature and robust. The persistent problems with these methods are the levels of effort associated with first developing, and then assessing various alternatives at the design stage. In Canada, the CBIP Program offers up to $60,000 to offset some of these higher costs, but these limited incentives cannot be expected to indefinitely subsidize fee structures that continue to reflect traditional building practice, rather than the more demanding challenges of sustainable architecture.

The higher costs arise primarily from the fragmented capabilities of building design tools. Most architectural offices use computer aided design software to perform drafting. The drawings typically do not contain sufficient information to enable structural analysis, let alone environmental forms of performance simulation. The translation of the building design into formats suitable for these types of analyses is time consuming, expensive and non-interactive at the software level. Until such time as building owners are willing to accept that the same software used to design a multi-million dollar jet airplane should be used to design a multi-million dollar building, most of the potential for parametric design which considers environmental impacts remains untapped.

Regardless, these programs and evaluation tools represent valuable means to improve design practices and raise awareness of sustainable architecture, provided clients are willing to pay for the additional cost of developing alternative schemes and performing comparative assessments. At present, the level of sustainability attained by Canadian buildings is not consistently assessed and comparison between design strategies is largely subjective. There is far too little monitoring data available to confirm claims made at the design stage, and it may be some time until such data is easily accessible through computerized building control systems. In the meantime, this should not discourage innovation and the pursuit of Sustainability Opportunities outlined in the next section.