HQE Aménagement: the HQE-GBC Alliance offers 19 indicators to help create sustainable neighborhoods

From the results of the "Test HQE Performance Quartier", they are brought together, in the form of practical sheets, in a decision-making guide addressing the commitments of HQE, in particular: quality of life, respect for the environment and performance. economic.

HQE Aménagement: 4 assessment fundamentals

A reference work, updated in 2020, the HQE Aménagement reference framework is now supplemented by a tool to provide practical assistance to all players (local elected officials, operators, project managers, etc.) involved in development projects. sustainable facilities.

In the first part, the new practical guide recalls that HQE Aménagement is based on a quality system and a generic method that can be adapted to any type of operation and be appropriated by any type of actor. This method proposes a common language, a structure for conducting operations and a permanent evaluation.

On this basis, the HQE Aménagement reference framework introduced 4 fundamentals to build and collectively bring to life a system for evaluating a sustainable development operation:

1. The acquisition of a common culture thanks to a co-constructed, contextualized and dimensioned device.

2. A participatory assessment through a shared and transparent mechanism.

3. Management and organization via an integrated and iterative device.

4. A formalization supported by an evaluation system included in the duration of the operation.

HQE Planning: 19 assessment indicators

With the desire to move from theory to practice, the HQE-GBC Alliance launched in 2018-2019, with the support of ADEME, an "HQE Performance District Test" on ten voluntary development operations. Objective: to establish a common base of indicators for an overall and multi-criteria assessment of development operations.

The second part of the new practical guide HQE Aménagement of the HQE-GBC Alliance, proposes to discover the 19 indicators (out of the 30 tested), selected for their relevance, their applicability and their responses to cross-cutting issues of sustainable development: change climate change, resource scarcity, biodiversity loss, health and well-being, social cohesion and the economy.

A real decision-making tool, the new HQE Aménagement practical guide presents the 19 indicators, divided into 3 main pillars, in the form of detailed practical sheets. They make it easy to find all the information needed to put them into practice in a sustainable neighborhood project: vocation, target values, calculation method, interpretation, etc.

Quality of life :

1. Housing and workspaces without nuisances: help in calculating the surfaces without nuisance, the latter being harmful to health.

2. Functional diversity: makes it possible to locate local services less than 500m from the housing or offices of the development operation.

3. Accessibility of public transport: 6 minutes walk or 500m maximum distance from accommodations or activities is recommended.

4. Accessibility of natural areas: in particular, they promote good physical and mental health and social interactions between the inhabitants of a district.

5. Practicability of active modes: determines peaceful traffic patterns and the quality of the links between a neighborhood and its environment.

6. Orientation of accommodation and activities: a decisive indicator for brightness and indoor temperature in all seasons.

Respect the environment :

7. Energy performance of buildings and public lighting: via the measurement and simulation of the forecast share of over-performing surfaces in terms of energy consumption.

8. Local energy production: makes it possible to estimate the local effort in terms of renewable energies and to measure the local energy bill.

9. Vegetated areas favorable to biodiversity: an indicator that focuses on the rate of revegetation of surfaces characterized by the Coefficient of Biotopes per Surface (CBS)

10. Waterproofing coefficient: it indicates the ratio between the waterproofed surface and the total surface considered.

11. Albedo: is the fraction of light that is reflected or scattered by a body, surface or medium.

12. Summer comfort index: makes it possible to ensure climatic comfort both inside and outside, in particular via islands of coolness.

13. Excavated soil reused: reuse and disposal off the original site are the two approaches taken into account in the context of a specific focus on excess cuttings.

14. Recovery of construction waste: helps measure the effectiveness of waste management on site.

15. Potential reuse of stormwater: makes it possible to measure the quantity of reusable rainwater on the perimeter of the development.

Economic performance :

16. Urban renewal: renovate, where possible, existing infrastructure.

17. Optimization and pooling of VRD (Roads and Various Networks): to promote initiatives in favor of optimization or pooling to save materials.

18. Local employment or integration: estimate the jobs generated by the development project.

19. Raw materials from local channels: identify local suppliers and resources to promote long-term savings.

To download the guide: click here