This press release is over six months old and the details may have been superseded. Please contact the Press Office for the latest information. Some of the best performing buildings assessed under sustainable buildings standard BREEAM were recognised at the annual BREEAM awards celebration hosted by TV architect Charlie Luxton in London last night. Now in its 25^th year, BREEAM was the world’s first sustainability standard for buildings, communities and homes and is now used in over 70 countries around the world, providing a range of social, environmental and economic benefits to clients. To date over one million buildings have been assessed against the standard with percentage ratings calculated against a range of criteria by independent BREEAM assessors. Continuing on with the selection process introduced last year, a panel of independent judges including architect Bill Gething, Claudine Blamey of the Crown Estate, Alan Cole of the Home Office, Mike Smith of BSRIA, Louise Sunderland of the UK Green Building Council and Thomas Lane of Building magazine selected the winners from a shortlist of the highest scoring buildings in each category. Their decision was based on the specific circumstances, challenges and achievements of each development as well as the very high BREEAM scores achieved. Over 50 ground breaking projects were shortlisted from across Europe with eight awards going to UK-based projects and four others shared equally between France and Norway. The winners in the scheme categories were:

• BREEAM Offices New Construction: One Pancras Square, Kings Cross, London
• BREEAM Offices In-Use: Washington Plaza, Paris
• BREEAM Offices Refurbishment  & Fit Out: Morelands Rooftop, London
• BREEAM Retail New Construction: Fornebu S, Oslo
• BREEAM Retail In-Use: La Caserne de Bonne, Grenoble
• BREEAM Retail Refurbishment & Fit Out: 107-109 Charing Cross Road, London
• BREEAM Industrial: Armstrong Point, Wigan
• BREEAM Mixed Use and Other Buildings:  Brent Civic Centre, London
• BREEAM Education:  Brandon Primary School, Durham
• BREEAM Healthcare: Dumfries and Galloway Acute Mental Health Unit
• BREEAM Residential:  119 Ebury Street, London

In a closely run contest for the coveted Your BREEAM award, Fornebu S, Oslo’s newest retail outlet pipped the second placed building 119 Ebury Street, by just a handful of votes out of the several thousand cast.

Director of BREEAM Gavin Dunn said ‘My sincere congratulations go to the teams behind all of these projects, and to the commitment, drive and ingenuity they have shown in delivering inspirational levels of sustainability. Along with the well documented green benefits of these projects, we know from independent research that these buildings are bringing increased value for investors and improved satisfaction to users and occupiers.’

Other high scoring projects commended by the judges included the Diageo Guinness Brew House in Dublin, DC1 Prologis Park in Dunstable, the WWF-UK Living Planet Centre in Woking, BLOX in Prague and 10 Burlington St and 18 Hanway Street in London.

GreenBuild Consult was announced as BREEAM 2015 Assessor Company of the Year and three people received BREEAM 2015 Assessors of the Year Awards: Amanda Gallagher of Easlár, Yasmina Mikhael of RES Design Long & Partners, Barry Rankin of GWP Project Services.

BREEAM Country First Awards are given to the assessor who undertakes the very first BREEAM assessment in a particular country. They were presented to Zsombor Barta of the Sentient Kft for the first BREEAM assessment in South Korea, Zane Sauka of IB&P Konsultacijas, for the first Latvian assessment, Natalya Naumova of Drees & Sommer for Kazakhstan and Anna Foden of Max Fordham for the first assessment in Iraq.

Photos from the awards ceremony will be posted to the BRE Flickr site: www.flickr.com/brewatford and see https://events.bregroup.com/ for more detailed case studies on the winning buildings and shortlisted projects. For further information or for photos of the winning projects please contact Tom Harvey, email harveyt@bre.co.uk NOTES TO EDITOR BREEAM is the internationally recognised measure of sustainability for buildings and communities. Over 425,000 certificates have been issued under BREEAM on more than 24,000 projects around the world, and 1.9 million buildings and communities are registered for certification. The scheme is developed across Europe through a family of National Scheme Operators including BREEAM UK, NL, DE, ES, SE and NOR. Internationally BREEAM is used in more than 60 countries. More information at bregroup.com/products/breeam/