We love Life Cycle Design and we want to make it attractive to everyone. We are driven by innovation and passion and backed up by a constantly improving scientific approach. We are always looking for ways to make LCD more mainstream and encourage greater uptake by the built environment sector.

Transparency is key to successful Life Cycle Design practice and we are very excited to announce eTool now produces EN15978 compliant automated reports. Yes, no more editing documents or tables outside the software to produce your final reports!

Our goal with eTool and our community of software users is to achieve carbon reduction by allowing better understanding and consistent measurement of the whole life carbon emissions of built projects.

GWP Graph

The automated reporting functionality was developed to comply with the widely accepted environmental performance assessment methodology EN 15978. We all know eTool produces results in accordance with EN15978 but the automated reporting increases a standardized approach to its practical implementation and interpretation including:

Introduction
Goals
Scope
- Functional Unit, System Boundary, Environmental Indicators, System Description, Cut off criteria, Allocation, Independent review
Inventory Analysis
- eTool software, Data quality, Completeness,
Life Cycle Impact Assessment
Life Cycle Interpretation
Conclusions
References
- Background LCI Data, Inventory Design Documentation, Inventory Assumptions, EPDs
Appendix
- Environmental Indicators Description, Detailed Structure Scope Diagram, Detailed Life Cycle Inventory

How to Generate Reports

This video is from 2016 so a little outdated now but it will show how automated reports are generated in eTool.

EXAMPLE REPORTS

To generate the full EN 15978 compliant LCA report, you navigate to the ‘Reports’ tab in your design and select ‘LCA Report’ in the drop down menu for Report Type. Additional fields will appear depending on which report you’ve selected. For the LCA Report, it looks something like the image below and you’re able to specify if you want to compare your design with another design (usually the ‘Improved/Proposed Design’ in your project) or a benchmark.

You can also set your ‘benchmark’ as a design from the same structure or a different project altogether. Make sure that the benchmark you’ve selected is comparable with your design though.

Click on the following link to download an example full EN 15978 compliant LCA report. Please note that this report is based on a dummy project therefore the figures & results are not to be used as reference. Reports will not contain any water marks once the Design has been certified.

LCA report

OTHER REPORTS

EN15978 is not the only report we produce there are numerous others we have automated to help clients and users understand the modelling results at different stages of the life cycle design process. We are continually updating and improving on these but below is a selection.

All Impact Details report (.xlsx)

All Impact Details report (.png)

(Excel spreadsheet that contains every input in the LCA plus multiple tabs including datasheets for ISCA & Metronet reporting. PNG file above are just screenshots of the tabs)