Professional guidance
Circular economy assessment tool
How circular is
your building?
Will Mihkelson, Charles Gillott and Danielle Densley Tingley introduce Regenerate: a
circular economy engagement tool for the assessment of new and existing buildings.
The circular economy focuses on
retaining materials at their highest
value for as long as possible, thereby
aiming to keep materials in circulation,
removing waste and the need for
extraction of new resources. The
circular economy is now a widely
accepted approach to decarbonise
the built environment and reach netzero targets by 2050. However, there
remains limited awareness of circular
design philosophies and associated
design actions. It is also difficult and
time-consuming to assess projects
and compare design options, with
limited consensus as to what a
circular design looks like.
What is Regenerate?
Regenerate is a circular economy
tool developed by the University of
Sheffield, in collaboration with AECOM.
It aims to engage all stakeholders
involved in the design and construction
of buildings, and provides an
assessment framework to measure:
how circular is your building?
The tool can be used on all
projects, including new builds,
refurbishments and a combination of
the two. It has been designed with the
iterative nature of the design process
in mind and evolves as projects evolve
to give an early indication of suitable
circular economy approaches, as well
as aid more detailed decisions in later
design stages.
Regenerate integrates the principle
of building layering (i.e. site, structure,
skin, services, space)1 within a novel
circular economy workflow (Figure 1)2.
This details four overarching design
principles, as well as the order in which
they should be addressed to maximise
the useful lifetime of buildings,
components and materials.
The developed workflow begins
with Design for Adaptability –
increasing future use options
to extend a building’s lifespan
and maintain materials at their
highest possible value. Design for
Deconstruction is considered next to
ensure that building components may
be removed and reused if the building
as a whole cannot. Circular Material
Selection and Resource Efficiency
are then addressed to maximise the
reusability of components and ensure
that the design is met using the
minimum amount of material possible.
How does
Regenerate work?
Regenerate is integrated in an online
web app (https://regenerateapp.
urbanflows.ac.uk/register) to facilitate
collaborative assessment across
the design team and comparison
between different projects or design
FIGURE 1: Circular
economy assessment
workflow developed
by University of
Sheffield and AECOM
and used within
Regenerate
variations. The tool is accompanied
by a supporting website (https://
regenerate.urbanflows.ac.uk/)
containing key information and a
video-assisted user guide as well
as a comprehensive list of circular
economy resources and good practice
case studies.
In order to facilitate assessment,
Regenerate first collects a number
of project details. These include the
development type (i.e. new build,
refurbishment or mixed), the floor
area of each portion of the building,
and which layers are to be affected
as part of the proposed works.
As well as allowing a broad range
of projects (e.g. facade retention,
foundation reuse or service upgrade)
to be assessed, this enables areaweighting to prevent circularity within
a small portion of the building being
disproportionately rewarded.
The main assessment element of
Regenerate is based upon the four
design principles in Fig. 1. Within
each principle – and across building
layers – a series of circularity criteria
have been developed, representing
specific design actions that can be
taken to increase a project’s circularity.
An example of one such criterion is
given in Figure 2, with there being
a total of 86 across all four design
principles and five building layers.
As shown in Fig. 2, users of
Regenerate indicate where they
have met each circularity criteria
simply by selecting ‘Yes’ within the
corresponding building area. A default
selection of ‘No’ is used where a
criterion has not been met, with a ‘To
be determined’ option being included
for use in earlier design stages. In all
cases, users are required to provide
justification for their response, both to
maximise engagement with circular
economy thinking and prevent false
claims of high circularity.
Based upon these inputs,
Regenerate awards a series of
22
March 2023 | thestructuralengineer.org
pp22-23_TSE_Mar23_Professional guidance.indd 22
23/02/2023 14:07
Circular economy assessment tool
Professional guidance
FIGURE 2:
Example circularity
criterion (Design for
Deconstruction 2)
detailing compliance
in ground-floor retail
space (representing
one-third of total
project floor area)
alongside associated
credit award and textbased justification
circularity credits. These take a
maximum value of 1 for each criterion,
which is apportioned based upon
the floor space associated with each
building area (as shown in Fig. 2).
Beyond this main assessment
element, Regenerate may also be
used to create circular economy
statements, such as those required
by the Greater London Authority
(GLA), as a result of its inclusion
of populatable Bill of Materials and
Recycling and Waste forms.
What can Regenerate
tell me?
To assess how circular a building is, the
credits awarded for different circularity
criteria are summed for use in various
outputs. Both tabular and graphical
summaries are provided (Figure 3),
with attained credits being split up by
circularity principle and building layer.
In addition to the circularity of the
assessed building as a whole, these
outputs help to highlight the relative
success of different strategies and
stakeholder groups, as well as key
areas for improvement.
In addition to engaging key
stakeholders with the circular
economy and influencing decisions
throughout the design process,
outputs from Regenerate may be
used directly in the preparation of
circular economy statements. This is
facilitated by the automatic generation
of PDF outputs of Awarded Credit
summaries (such as in Fig. 3), as
well as key GLA requirements such
as Bill of Materials and Recycling and
Waste metrics.
How do I get Regenerate?
Regenerate is free to use and available
along with supporting information at
https://regenerate.urbanflows.ac.uk.
If you have any queries or would like
to give feedback, please contact
regenerate@sheffield.ac.uk.
REFERENCES
1) Brand S. (1994) How buildings
learn: what happens after they’re
built, New York, NY: Viking
FIGURE 3: Example
summary output from
Regenerate, showing
attained credits
disaggregated by
principle and building
layer in both graphical
and tabular form
2) Gillott C., Mihkelson W., Lanau
M., Cheshire D. and Densley Tingley
D. (2023) ‘Developing regenerate:
a circular economy engagement
tool for the assessment of new and
existing buildings’, J. Ind. Ecol.;
https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13377
23
thestructuralengineer.org | March 2023
pp22-23_TSE_Mar23_Professional guidance.indd 23
23/02/2023 14:07