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One Click LCA - Building Life-Cycle Assessment

Building Life Cycle Assessment is One Click away with DesignBuilder

DesignBuilder comes with native integration to One Click LCA, the world’s leading building LCA and LCC platform. This integration enables users to:

  • Transfer DesignBuilder energy models quickly and easily to One Click LCA for additional materials analyses
  • Achieve BREEAM Mat 01 LCA and LCC credits and LEED v4 and v4.1 LCA and materials credits
  • Use One Click LCA’s material database to get a true picture of the carbon & LCA performance

DesignBuilder and One Click LCA have both been developed with ease of use in mind, so it's no surprise that when combined, they work together seamlessly to allow building carbon footprints and other environmental impacts to be assessed and reported in just a matter of minutes. Some specific advantages of the new LCA workflow include:

  • Only LCA software rated 100% for BREEAM.
  • Additional tools for Life Cycle Costing, Infrastructure, EPD, CSR and more.
  • Support LEED v4, DGNB, HQE, E + C and many other green building schemes.
  • Access the biggest LCA database on the market, with thousands of EPDs and all your local data.
  • Easy to interpret visual results and access to benchmark data.

OneClickLCA BREEAM7

The One Click LCA cloud service is accessed from DesignBuilder via its "One Click LCA" toolbar button which can be found on the Edit screen and also on the Cost and Carbon screen on the Embodied Carbon tab. The integration creates a materials model of the building behind the scenes and submits it to One Click LCA, providing building LCA results with the minimum of time and effort.

OneClickLCAToolbar

 

 

Furthermore, if the required scope of analysis goes beyond what is captured in the energy model (e.g. structural elements, foundation or external areas), those can be conveniently added in One Click LCA directly. This allows you to focus on energy-relevant modelling scope within DesignBuilder. 

Achieve BREEAM and LEED materials credits with pre-approved One Click LCA

One Click LCA is a pre-approved LCA software for all versions of BREEAM. It can be used to achieve Mat 01 Life-Cycle Assessment, Life-Cycle Costing and other materials credits. It is the highest rated LCA software for BREEAM with 100 % verified rating, allowing you to achieve the exemplary credits. One Click LCA also supports BREEAM LCC scope both for elemental and component level analyses.

It also supports BREEAM UK NC 2018, where Mat 01 LCA fully substitutes Green Guide. One Click LCA can support up to 7 + 3 exemplary credits for Mat 01. In addition, it can support creating seven other BREEAM-compliant analyses, worth up to 14 credits more, for a maximum potential of 24 credits.

One Click LCA complies fully with LEED v4 requirements for LCA and comes with separate database for North American and International users. Furthermore, One Click LCA supports dozens of national and international certifications and standards.

Read the credits details here for BREEAM UK, BREEAM International, LEED v4 and other systems. 

OneClickLCA BREEAM4

 Use One Click LCA’s material database to get a true picture of the carbon & LCA performance

One Click LCA contains environmental profiles for more than 8000 materials, including a wealth of manufacturer specific and verified Environmental Product Declarations. This allows calculating the exact embodied carbon results with the specific products from manufacturers supplying the project.

This level of the detail allows modelling environmental impacts arising of materials of refurbishment projects where changes only may occur for services and interior design. The list of integrated LCA databases is available here.

One Click LCA also helps you understand how your project is doing in carbon performance terms with Carbon Heroes Benchmark Program, which brings together 1000 buildings for embodied carbon benchmarking purposes.

As well as LEED and BREEM Certification, One Click LCA also provides reports for DGNB, Green Star, NS3720, Taxonomy and many others. You can read the full list on their help page. 

Getting started

For more information on the integration, please see: DesignBuilder and One Click LCA: instant Life Cycle Assessment from DesignBuilder

For DesignBuilder-specific instructions please go to: DesignBuilder - One Click LCA Guidance

About One Click LCA

One Click LCA is a cloud software specializing in construction life-cycle metrics and circular economy. It is developed and marketed by One Click LCA Ltd. The software is used in over 50 countries, supports 30+ rating/certification systems and standards and holds 10 third party certifications.

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  • "I have watched the steady progression of DesignBuilder for the last 10 years or so, and having seen recent improvements in DesignBuilder’s HVAC and LEED modeling I decided to attend their training. I was both surprised and pleased to find how easy to use DesignBuilder is compared to the other similar tools I’ve tried, especially given the power and flexibility offered by the underlying EnergyPlus, Radiance and CFD engines. I’m really pleased that after a week’s training I feel ready to produce accurate results and outputs for loads and sizing calculations and energy analysis. The ability to also undertake fully-integrated daylighting and CFD analysis from the same model you use for loads and thermal simulations is also a very big plus point."
    David Ellis PE, Virginia 22102, USA
  • " We have had a very positive experience with DesignBuilder this semester as it was the first year we shifted from our previous simulation software to DesignBuilder. Our students seem to spend less time on learning the software and more on actually understanding the results and being able to analyse them."
    Dr Shahaboddin Resalati - Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Architecture and Building Physics Architectural Engineering Group, School of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University, UK
  • " The graphical user interface of DesignBuilder is comprehensive and intuitive, allowing us to model complex buildings simply and quickly. The data management structure (data hierarchy and inheritance) allows us to assign model data quickly and accurately, improving our efficiency. The power and flexibility of EnergyPlus, the underlying simulation engine, enables us to model a building in fine detail where required so that we can accurately analyse its performance. This is particularly helpful when calibrating the model with actual energy consumption to obtain a reliable close match when assessing potential improvements and energy conservation measures."
    Alessandro Righi, architect and researcher at IUAV - Laboratory technical physics
  • " We utilised DesignBuilder software to carry out detailed natural ventilation assessments on buildings at our UK gas plants in order to demonstrate compliance with hazardous area regulations. First of all I would like to praise the initial support received from DesignBuilder staff, who were extremely knowledgeable and provided a welcoming point of contact for support and advice. Having used the majority of the alternative building simulation software packages on the market, I found without a doubt DesignBuilder the most user friendly and enjoyable to use. The modelling program itself is fantastically simple allowing even complex buildings to be developed quickly and easily. The user interface of the calculation part of the software is well thought out and the results outputs are graphical and concise. Within a few hours I had got to grips with the software and obtained the results I desired. It has allowed Shell to present compliance to regulating authorities, who were also impressed with the visualisation displays and graphical outputs. I fully endorse DesignBuilder, and in particular how easy it was to learn and use compared to similar building simulation software on the market. "
    Iain Begg, Senior HVAC Engineer, Shell Projects and Technology Group, Aberdeen, Scotland
  • " DesignBuilder’s clear, well-structured layout and intuitive help system makes it a much simpler tool to learn and use, and compared to other simulation packages the creation of professional-looking geometry is much easier. The ease of use extends to other areas of the program such as thermal bridging analysis and setting up HVAC systems, and the capability to easily model adjacent ground conditions is very useful. A very important aspect of our work is optimisation, and DesignBuilder seems to be the only software that currently provides this functionality. We are encouraged that the development team have taken some of our functionality and user efficiency suggestions on board for the next release. We are already using DesignBuilder for research, and for the above reasons we think it is a tool that our students will find easier to use so we will be using it for teaching next academic year. "
    Professor Ljubomir Jankovic, Birmingham School of Architecture, Birmingham City University
  • " We decided to go out and measure some natural light levels in buildings that we have access to.... One building was our own office, and the other was a green building we worked on which will be tenanted in 2 weeks so we had a chance to take readings in the same environment for which we simulated. I am happy to say that the DesignBuilder results are very close to what we measured... What impresses me is that if we measure a value of 250 lux at 3m from the facade, DB returns similar values. This means that if we say that 40% of a building's usable area will have lux levels of 250 or above, then the measured results correlate with that. ... It certainly makes us confident in the results we give to clients."
    Warren Gray, Mechanical Engineer, Solid Green Consulting
  • " First of all I would like to thank you very much for the outstanding online training that you made possible for our team. I was very happy that we could join with three people in an online training that offered us as an outstanding value. ... The course with DesignBuilder is going very well and we have some great feedback from the students.... Your data entry GUI makes it easy for students not only to “accept defaults” but to experiment. In addition your online help is extremely thorough and you present not only the theoretical background but also offer great links to the reference. You might not realize what a powerful learning tool this is; but it is. We think you have created something very valuable and we are looking forward very much to where your company goes from here... Thanks again for your great support."
    Dr Manfred J. Zapka, University of Hawaii
  • " Gold stars all round .... Many thanks again for the high quality of customer service I receive from all at DesignBuilder, it is quite refreshing and a credit to your company."
    Mark O’Neill, DM Hall LLP, Glasgow, Scotland
  • "I worked with several building simulation applications and chose DesignBuilder because it had all the tools I needed in one place. It fitted well with the combined operational and embodied emissions objectives of my book, whilst squeezing every ‘gram’ of building performance through multi-objective optimisation."
    Prof Jankovic, Energy & Buildings, University of Salford, UK
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News & Updates

Webinar: Next-Generation Parametric Tools for Evidence-Based Design Decisions, 12th March 2025
DesignBuilder v7.3 is released!
DesignBuilder Climate Analytics is released
DesignBuilder v7.0.2.006 qualifies for US DOE 179D commercial building tax deductions

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