Key Considerations When Selecting Environmental Rating System : Decision-Making Analysis from Landlord and Tenant Perspective

• Main Author: Sauchyk, Dzmitry
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: KTH, Fastigheter och byggande 2017
• Subjects: Sustainability measurement tools; Environmental Certification; Analytic hierarchy process; multi-criteria analysis; Engineering and Technology; Teknik och teknologier
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-211139

It is estimated that nearly 100 various environmental product certification rating tools are implemented in the United States construction and real estate industries. Choice of a certain building sustainability measurement tool depends on the specific need for reflection of buildings’ impact on the natural and urban environment as well as its tenants. Selection of the appropriate rating system is a decision-making process performed by the project client (landlord of the building, potential or current tenant) which can be affected by clients’ insufficient knowledge or otherwise be biased. The result of selection decision has significant consequences for the project design, construction process complexity and entire life-cycle of the building. In this work, an effort is made to facilitate decision-making process of best environmental rating alternative selection for a “green building” project. The analytic hierarchy process is used to perform unbiased decision making on the environmental rating selection. The decision process has been evaluated from the landlord and the tenant perspectives. The findings of this study show that for the landlord, it would be enough to be certified with a single-attribute rating that covers only one characteristic of building sustainability and, according to AHP analysis, satisfies all significant landlord’s requirements for the environmental rating system. The main conclusion of the study is that selection of environmental rating is a multicriteria problem that should take into consideration the requirements from landlord and tenant as well as the environmental ratings characteristics but not based on the distinct assessment of the mentioned factors.