Target Setting studies provide users with the ability to produce models at concept stage and provide early design advice. These studies are meant to be very high level estimations for early stage projects and should only be used as a guidance to direct design & material choices. We generally do not recommend users to publish the results from Target Setting studies seeing as they are at a very early stage and the results will probably change in the later stages unless it’s part of planning policy requirements (refer to City of Vincent).
The main intention of target setting studies is to explore ideas and strategies to find out what will give you the most significant LCA benefit. The idea is that you shouldn’t really expect to see significant changes in the selection of improvement strategies identified at the Target Setting study stage compared to the Detailed Design stage. For example, if you’ve identified that specifying high efficiency lighting will lead to significant improvements during the Target Setting study, this will probably stay a significant strategy even in the detailed design stage.
Please refer to this post for the details on the Target Setting service that eTool offers.
Webinar Building LCA Benchmarking and Target Setting:
Ready To Use Templates
Project Set Up
- Ensure that your Structure Level description clearly explains the purpose of the study and all the assumptions that you may be using at this early stage of the project (i.e. early stage Target Setting study or development application for City of Vincent).
- Select the correct Design purpose in the ‘Details’ tab of your design.
- Use the built-in Service Life Calculator – refer to this support post for guidance on how to use this.
- Ensure that you have all the necessary functions needed so that the eTool default templates will work correctly. Basically, you’ll need a separate function for areas that have a different function from the other areas (i.e. a carpark performs different function from a dwelling). For each of these functions, ensure that all the inputs under the ‘Characteristics’ and ‘Services’ sections are populated correctly. This is because our eTool operational templates typically reference the inputs in these areas to calculate the estimated operational energy for your project. When you add your templates, please be sure to assign them to the correct function otherwise they will reference the wrong function inputs.
- Set a benchmark: for residential or commercial projects, you should specify a benchmark to ensure that you can generate the Target Setting report correctly. For City of Vincent projects, please use the Australian Benchmarks.
- Specify an appropriate functional unit for the Primary Function. For residential projects, this is typically ‘Occupant/per year’. For commercial projects, this is typically ‘Net Lettable Area/per year’.
Generating the Target Setting Report
All subscription levels are entitled to produce Target Setting models in the software so long as the Target Setting reports or results are not generated or distributed. Models and results can be displayed online only.
Enterprise users can generate an uncertified version of Target Setting Report with no need to pay associated software access fees. This uncertified version of the report will contain water marks to highlight that it has not been certified.
When the use of Target Setting Report is associated with commercial gain, the models will need to be certified by eTool. eToolLCD software access fee will apply according to the user subscription level. Please request a quote should you need this service.
You can download an example Target Setting report here.