Clarification

Alejandra - Not necessarily. In addition to understanding how project teams evaluate and select materials that comply with the requirements, we're also interested in the attributes that are being assessed to determine when a product that does not comply is, in the view of the project team members, deemed better on the whole. Basically, what are the attributes you use to select a product in addition to an assessment of its PBT content? The development of a “made up” baseline is one way to do it but, in the interest of learning as much as we can from your expertise and experience, we’d much rather see a comprehensive and valid alternatives assessment of equally suitable materials. Ideally, the assessment would be consistent across the product alternatives and you would explain the rationale behind your decision and where you got the data from. Does that help?

Thanks Brendan. I've also been wondering about this also. Sounds like a simple matrix listing and comparing the products using four selected life cycle attributes (e.g., durability, ease of maintenance, low carbon impact, bio-based materials, etc.) would be enough to address the multi-parameter analysis. BG-Pharos would be an excellent resource. Anything else?

Here's the BG article: http://www.buildinggreen.com/live/index.cfm/2010/11/30/Specifying-Green-Building-Products-GreenSpec-Pharos And the website (It's actually GreenSpec-Pharos): http://www.greenspecpharos.com/