The IMPACT project aimed to enable construction professionals to integrate measurement of the embodied environmental impact and life cycle cost performance of buildings with Building Information Modelling (BIM).
The project resulted in a specification and database which can be incorporated with IMPACT Compliant software tools to enable consistent Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC). Such tools work by allowing the user to attribute environmental and cost information in the BIM, enabling analysis of their design to optimise cost and environmental impacts. IMPACT also allows comparison of whole-building results to a suitable benchmark to assess performance, which can be linked to building assessment schemes such as BREEAM.
IES was involved in the development of the methodology and was the first to release IMPACT Compliant tools.