Introducing: BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out Version 7
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out Version 7 is a robust, science-driven standard that helps building owners, occupiers and sustainability professionals improve the performance, resilience and long-term value of existing buildings.
By following BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7, project teams, building owners and occupiers can implement sustainable upgrades that secure long-term value. This includes reducing operational costs, enhancing occupant comfort and wellbeing, minimising the risk of obsolescence, and supporting broader sustainability goals. The standard also provides clear, measurable and independently certified outcomes, helping owners and occupiers to better understand, verify and communicate the predicted environmental and operational performance of their spaces.
Key changes in V7 include:
- Expanded whole-life carbon assessments, including benchmarking and reporting for both predicted operational and embodied carbon, and the integration of mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems and infrastructure into embodied carbon assessments
- Updated climate resilience criteria for extreme weather
- New health and wellbeing standards for occupants
- Improved alignment with internal and external reporting frameworks, along with enhanced data collection
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 helps building owners maximise value from existing assets by supporting informed refurbishment decisions and assessing sustainability performance.
Owners can use BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 to create a sustainability roadmap, prioritising renovations that will realise efficiency targets, maintain market competitiveness and ensure long-term asset value and return on investment (ROI). The standard helps owners improve building performance in ways that can reduce operating costs, strengthen leasing potential and support stronger asset valuations over time.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 responds to changing environmental and market demands, helping owners reduce the risk of buildings becoming outdated and improve their long-term resilience.
The standard supports projects at every level from full-scale adaptive reuse to more minor renovations, providing a flexible approach that helps owners reuse or adapt buildings rather than replace them. By supporting ongoing building improvement and decarbonisation over time, BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 helps owners reduce the risk of assets becoming obsolete, while maintaining relevance in a changing market.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 aligns with changing market expectations, regulations and climate-related challenges, enabling owners to better identify and manage risks.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 provides a structured way to address both physical and transition risks, helping owners protect asset value as conditions evolve. By helping owners identify and manage risks tied to ageing assets like regulatory compliance, shifting tenant expectations and environmental concerns, the standard promotes strategies that strengthen building resilience and reduce long-term exposure to evolving climate and market concerns.
Using a consistent global science-based standard, BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 helps owners worldwide build a clearer understanding of sustainability performance across portfolios, and make more informed, consistent decisions at asset level.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 supports portfolio level planning by translating individual refurbishment decisions into comparable data that can inform long-term investment and asset strategies. The standard also enables owners to compare refurbishment and fit out outcomes across assets, helping identify where improvements will have the greatest impact at portfolio level.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 supports project teams develop performance-driven refurbishment strategies that respond to changing market and client needs while unlocking the full potential of existing buildings.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 helps project delivery teams translate refurbishment strategies into a clear value proposition for clients, balancing design intent with long-term performance outcomes. By supporting a more strategic approach to building upgrades and renovation, the standard enables project teams to deliver designs that are both commercially and environmentally viable.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 enables project delivery teams to make more efficient use of materials during refurbishment and fit out projects, reducing embodied carbon and environmental impact.
By prioritising the reuse and optimisation of existing building stock over more resource-intensive new construction, BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 helps project delivery teams reduce material use and embodied carbon. The standard helps balance performance upgrades with material efficiency, enabling lower carbon refurbishment and fit out decisions without compromising design intent or functionality.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 provides project delivery teams with a clear framework to navigate complex design decisions, maximise sustainability outcomes and communicate value to their clients.
By grounding sustainability in the latest industry data and recognised metrics, BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 enables delivery teams to give clients greater confidence in their design decisions. It also supports delivery teams in communicating the trade-offs between risks and opportunities, helping clients understand the value of different design approaches.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 helps investors maximise the value of their existing assets by supporting refurbishment and fit out strategies that improve performance and strengthen market appeal.
The standard helps investors capture value by guiding the refurbishment of existing assets to meet evolving market expectations.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 helps investors identify and understand the climate, regulatory and operational risks affecting existing buildings, supporting investment in upgrades that protect asset value over time.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 helps investors identify and mitigate risks inherent in existing assets, from ageing infrastructure to evolving climate and regulatory pressures.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 helps investors evidence the decarbonisation of existing portfolios through measurable refurbishment and fit out improvements that align with leading global sustainability requirements and regulatory frameworks.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 provides a practical pathway to decarbonise existing portfolios and align them with evolving market expectations through targeted upgrades and verifiable data.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 provides a trusted benchmark for quality internal environments giving occupiers greater confidence in the performance of the spaces they lease and occupy.
Interiors certified by BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 optimise air quality, lighting and other features to enhance comfort and focus, helping employees thrive in their workspace. The standard provides a consistent reference framework that allows occupiers to assess workplace quality across lease cycles and make more informed decisions about how to best use space.
BREEAM Fit Out V7 helps occupiers and corporate tenants maximise the opportunity of fit outs to improve energy efficiency, optimise performance and create long-term value.
The standard provides occupiers with verified performance data that supports sustainability reporting, disclosure requirements and organisational decarbonisation commitments. From energy efficiency to material selection, the standard provides certified, data-backed evidence that interior upgrades support sustainability targets.
BREEAM Fit Out V7 encourages the creation of healthier, more comfortable environments that support occupant wellbeing and productivity.
The standard supports upgrades that drive more efficient spaces by promoting higher-performing lighting, water and interior systems, helping reduce energy use and operational costs. BREEAM Fit Out V7’s focus on features that enhance the comfort and focus of occupants helps drive productivity gains while supporting healthier, more enjoyable spaces.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 provides sustainability professionals with a clear, structured framework to evaluate refurbishment and fit out projects consistently across asset types and geographies.
The standardised criteria, along with flexible, but defined assessment scopes, enable assessors to deliver consistent, comparable evaluations across diverse refurbishment and fit out projects.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 enhances the breadth and accuracy of data collected, enabling sustainability professionals to share stronger insights.
By structuring how performance information is captured across refurbishment and fit out projects, BREEAM RFO V7 helps sustainability professionals guide clients in a way that is clearer and more informed.
BREEAM Refurbishment and Fit Out V7 equips sustainability professionals with the evidence to advocate for the reuse of existing building stock and provides a structured way to evaluate how refurbishment and fit out decisions contribute to reducing operational and embodied carbon.
By embedding carbon considerations into each stage of assessment, BREEAM RFO V7 enables sustainability professionals to identify where refurbishment strategies can deliver the greatest carbon reductions. It also helps align project-level refurbishment decisions with broader decarbonisation goals by making carbon performance a core part of the assessment process.