A life cycle analysis of the Geography Building

This life cycle analysis was performed on the UBC Geography Building, a 51,883 sf, wood-frame academic building built in 1924, for the purpose of establishing a materials inventory and environmental impact reference to be applied in the assessment of potential upgrades. It was also completed simultaneously with 20 other institutional buildings at UBC for creating a benchmark as a standard against which existing buildings and new constructions assess and interpret. The benchmark is assessed for each environmental impact category through calculating the average impact per square meter of the element. The Takeoff model, developed by last year student1, and the original architectural drawings of the Geography Building are used to check the accuracy of the quantity of materials (length, area, and number) used as the IE input data. In this project, IE Inputs are sorted based on a modified version of level 3 of Canadian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (CIQS) format. From the improved model and using Athena Sustainable Materials Institute’s Impact Estimator Bill of Materials was and Environmental impacts of each level 3 element were determined. The largest quantities of material were gypsum board, softwood plywood, 6mil polyethylene, cedar wood shiplap, and stucco. The summary of environmental impact measures for different level 3 CIQS categories were also obtained from IE software and the hotspots for each environmental impact category among different lifecycle stages and among different level 3 CIQS categories were identified. Roof Constructions, Walls above Grade, and Foundations have the highest impacts respectively. There are only very small basement areas in the building and the ground floors are inclined wood joist floors which are included in Upper level construction elements. Thus, the Lowest floor construction and Walls below grade, does not have a significant environmental impact. The comparisons also indicate that the Construction stage has much more environmental impacts that Production stage. In comparison ...