BREEAM is a well established holistic assessment method for understanding and maximising how sustainable a building project can be. BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) is the leading and most widely used environmental assessment method for buildings. It sets the standard for best practice in sustainable design and has become the de facto measure used to describe a building's environmental performance.

Assessment takes place over ten categories:

• Management
• Health and wellbeing
• Energy
• Transport
• Water
• Materials
• Waste
• Land use and ecology
• Pollution
• Innovation.

Credits are awarded according to the impact of the development on the enviroment and marked indipendantly against a  set of strict criteria.Many credits are common between schemes, while some are exclusive to an individual development. During the assessment, credits are added together within each sub category and an environmental weighting is applied to the scores. A single overall score is then produced which results in the building being rated on a scale of Fail, Pass, Good, Very Good, Excellent, or Outstanding.