FAQ — Fre­quent­ly Asked Questions

At Insti­tut Bauen und Umwelt e.V., two dif­fer­ent EPDs are gen­er­al­ly offered: the IBU EPD and the “Core EPD”, in accor­dance with EN 15804. The pri­ma­ry dif­fer­ence between these two types of EPD is the extent of infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed. The Core EPD con­tains only nor­ma­tive manda­to­ry required con­tents. Specif­i­cal­ly, this means that a Core EPD, among oth­er things, con­tains no data regard­ing the pro­duc­tion, prod­uct pro­cess­ing, con­di­tions of use, dis­pos­al, or the behav­iour of the prod­uct in unusu­al cir­cum­stances. Fur­ther, nei­ther Chap­ter 6 (Life Cycle Assess­ment Inter­pre­ta­tion) nor Chap­ter 7 (Evi­dence) are includ­ed. These miss­ing chap­ters sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the use­ful­ness of the EPD in com­par­i­son to a com­plete IBU EPD, which is why, in order to sup­ply infor­ma­tion that is as con­cise and com­pre­hen­sive as pos­si­ble, the IBU nor­mal­ly rec­om­mends the cre­ation of an IBU EPD.

The num­ber­ing is struc­tured as follows:

• EPD_KKK_JJJJLLLL-DSRV-SP
• K = com­pa­ny iden­ti­fi­er (cap­i­tal let­ters only)
•  J = year
• L = ser­i­al num­ber begin­ning with 0001; this will be gen­er­at­ed by the sys­tem and is reset to 0001 at the begin­ning of each new year
• D = type of dec­la­ra­tion: C = core EPD; I= IBU EPD
• S = sys­tem bound­aries: A = cra­dle to gate; B = cra­dle to gate with options; C = cra­dle to grave
• R = rep­re­sen­ta­tive status
• A = dec­la­ra­tion of a spe­cif­ic prod­uct from a manufacturer’s fac­to­ry; to H = dec­la­ra­tion of an aver­age prod­uct aver­aged from sev­er­al fac­to­ries of sev­er­al man­u­fac­tur­ers, not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the association;
• V =ver­sion; the cur­rent ver­sion begins with 1; changes to the EPD can be made using a ver­sion number.
• SP = lan­guage abbreviation

Inde­pen­dent ver­i­fi­ca­tion of EPDs is stip­u­lat­ed by ISO 14025 and EN 15804, and indi­cates that the EPD has been test­ed and approved by an inde­pen­dent expert (ver­i­fi­er) pri­or to pub­li­ca­tion. The review con­tains the fol­low­ing criteria:

• Plau­si­bil­i­ty
• Com­plete­ness
• Con­sis­ten­cy

Using the EPD-Online Tool, the man­u­fac­tur­er sub­mits its EPD to the IBU to be ver­i­fied. The IBU selects a ver­i­fi­er from the ver­i­fi­er com­mit­tee and assigns the EPD, allow­ing the required doc­u­ments (EPD, back­ground report, or oth­er addi­tion­al ver­i­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ments, if pos­si­ble) to be made avail­able to the ver­i­fi­er. In the event of ques­tions or dis­crep­an­cies, the ver­i­fi­er con­tacts the man­u­fac­tur­er so that the EPD can be revised. If all of the data is cor­rect, the ver­i­fi­er releas­es the EPD so that it can be pub­lished by the IBU. The inde­pen­dence of review­ers is very impor­tant to the IBU, and there­fore the IBU, rather than the man­u­fac­tur­er, selects the ver­i­fi­er. For this rea­son, the ver­i­fi­ca­tion costs are not paid from the man­u­fac­tur­er to the ver­i­fi­er, but rather, the IBU charges a lump sum and pays the man­u­fac­tur­er for the verification.

The assign­ment of the ver­i­fi­er to the indi­vid­ual EPD projects is done by the employ­ees of the IBU branch office, in accor­dance with the expe­ri­ence and area of activ­i­ty of the indi­vid­ual ver­i­fi­er, as well as their avail­abil­i­ty. The ver­i­fi­ca­tion costs are charged to the dec­la­ra­tion own­er by the IBU in a lump sum of € 2.000 per EPD. Any addi­tion­al costs are borne by the IBU. This process of man­u­­fac­­tur­er-neu­­tral assign­ment and pay­ment of review­ers ensures the inde­pen­dence and qual­i­ty of the IBU, and serves as a fun­da­men­tal ele­ment of our claim to credibility.

Prod­uct life cycle description

1. Chap­ter: Gen­er­al statements

These con­tain, among oth­er things, basic infor­ma­tion about the man­u­fac­tur­er, the prod­uct declared, the range of the valid­i­ty of the EPD, and the date until which the EPD is valid.

2. Chap­ter: Product

This con­tains, among oth­er things, a detailed prod­uct descrip­tion, the spe­cif­ic intend­ed pur­pose of the declared prod­uct, a descrip­tion of the most sig­nif­i­cant (build­ing) tech­ni­cal data for the prod­uct, infor­ma­tion regard­ing place­ment on the mar­ket and appli­ca­tion rules, spec­i­fi­ca­tions for the raw and aux­il­iary mate­ri­als of which the prod­uct is com­posed, a descrip­tion of the pro­duc­tion process, as well as the behav­iour of the prod­uct under unusu­al influ­ences. Fur­ther­more, it con­tains infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the instal­la­tion, use and dis­pos­al of the product.

3. Chap­ter: Life cycle assess­ment algorithms

These describe, among oth­er things, the unit declared, the sys­tem lim­i­ta­tions, cut­t­ing-off rules, back­ground data, data qual­i­ty and applied allo­ca­tion process­es with life cycle assessments.

4. Chap­ter: Life cycle assess­ment sce­nar­ios and addi­tion­al tech­ni­cal information

These doc­u­ment the life cycle assess­ment on the build­ing lev­el and nec­es­sary sce­nario infor­ma­tion, e.g., ref­er­ence service life, or expen­di­tures for clean­ing dur­ing use.

Life cycle assess­ment data

5. Chap­ter: Life cycle assess­ment results

This con­tains the life cycle assess­ment results in accor­dance with EN 15804 and ISO 14040ff.

Addi­tion­al data

6. Chap­ter: Life cycle assess­ment interpretation

This con­tains a dom­i­nance analy­sis as well as a descrip­tion of the gap or vari­ance of the results in order to make pos­si­ble a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of the life cycle assess­ment values.

7. Chap­ter: Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and test results

This con­tains addi­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal or health-rel­e­­vant state­ments, e.g., regard­ing the emis­sions behav­iour of the prod­uct (key­word VOC emissions).

8. Chap­ter: Ref­er­ence works

This is a list­ing of all norms, stan­dards and key doc­u­ments used that apply to the declaration.

Sup­ple­ment to the core EPD:

At Insti­tut Bauen und Umwelt e.V., two dif­fer­ent EPDs are gen­er­al­ly offered: the IBU EPD and the “Core EPD”, in accor­dance with EN 15804. The pri­ma­ry dif­fer­ence between these two types of EPD is the extent of the infor­ma­tion provided.

All cur­rent­ly valid IBU EPDs can be found on the IBU web­site and in the EPD-Online Tool (fol­low­ing free registration).

EPDs are the fun­da­men­tal data used for the eco­log­i­cal pil­lars of sus­tain­abil­i­ty assess­ment in build­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems: In the DGNB sys­tem and in the BNB, EPDs are applic­a­ble for indi­vid­ual build­ing prod­ucts, in order to cal­cu­late the building’s life cycle assess­ment. With LEED, cred­it points may be earned through the exis­tence of EPDs, which is sim­i­lar in func­tion to BREEAM.

Fur­ther, through the data col­lec­tion and eval­u­a­tion that takes place in the process of cre­at­ing an EPD, man­u­fac­tur­ers are able to gain insights into their own process­es. Through the life cycle analy­sis, the build­ing prod­uct can be checked for eco­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic hotspots, and can be sub­se­quent­ly opti­mised, not only con­serv­ing resources and reduc­ing the envi­ron­men­tal effects of the prod­uct, but also bring­ing finan­cial sav­ings through increased effi­cien­cy in the process.

The EPD is thus not only an infor­ma­tion­al doc­u­ment for plan­ners, archi­tects and audi­tors, but also a valu­able instru­ment for the man­u­fac­tur­er in opti­mis­ing his/her own prod­ucts and processes.