This document establishes the general principles of building environment design to achieve a quality building environment for the occupants and sustainability. This document promotes an approach in which the various parties involved in building environment design collaborate with one another to provide a high-quality building environment.

The design process aims to achieve the following:

—     to address issues concerning sustainability over the building life cycle, including owning and operating costs at all stages of the design process;

—     to assess the proposed design with rational criteria for the thermal, acoustic and visual environment, the indoor air quality, energy efficiency and performance of technical building systems at each design stage;

—     to use an iterative design process in which each design stage is subject to design review and decisions before proceeding with the next design phase.

The building environment design involves not only the architectural design associated with the environmental quality, but also building system design including effective control methods.

This document is applicable to building environment design for new construction and retrofitting existing buildings.