This snapshot taken on 07/01/2011, shows web content selected for preservation by The National Archives. External links, forms and search boxes may not work in archived websites.

Scoring a Building for Life assessment

Buidling for Life assessments are scored against the 20 Building for Life criteria. Each of the criteria can be scored as 1, 0.5 or 0.

Building for Life uses a simple, evidence-based system to score housing schemes against the 20 Building for Life criteria. This leads to an assesssment which is expressed as a mark out of 20.

Scoring the 20 criteria

Evaluating housing proposals step by step shows the types of evidence you can use to score each of the 20 Building for Life criteria. Each of the criteria can receive one of three scores:

  • 1 - there is sufficient evidence that the design meets the criteria
  • 0.5 - a specific part of the design meets the criteria , but another does not
  • 0 - there is not enough evidence that the design meets the criteria, or the evidence shows that the design does not meet the criteria.

If one of the criteria is not relevant it should be scored as 0, with a clear explanation of why the criteria is not applicable. It is still possible to score very highly against Building for Life even if some criteria are not scored (for example, Rostron Brow in Stockport could not score against criteria 12 as it has no car parking, yet it won a Building for Life award in 2008).

Scoring the overall assessment

The overall Building for Life assessment is scored out of 20. These scores are subdivided into the following grades:

  • Very good - 16/20 or more
  • Good - 14/20 to 15.5/20
  • Average - 10/20 to 13.5/20
  • Poor - 9.5/20 or less