Do BREEAM and LEED really make buildings better?

Walk into the reception of any new office block and you’ll usually see it, framed proudly behind the desk - a certificate, stating BREEAM Excellent or LEED Gold - sometimes Platinum, if the developer is feeling particularly pleased with themselves. The plaque signals virtue. It tells investors, tenants and planners that this is a responsible building. Sustainable, forward-thinking and best of all - certified. But here’s the uncomfortable question - do these certifications genuinely improve safety and sustainability - or are they simply the industry’s preferred way of proving that it has tried, writes John Ridgeway?

To be clear, rating systems such as BREEAM and LEED emerged for good reasons. They created a structure where none existed. They encouraged measurement. They nudged clients to consider energy use, water efficiency, materials and occupant wellbeing. At their best, they helped normalise conversations that were once niche. The trouble is - what happens when a framework becomes a finish line.

Certification systems inevitably turn complex environmental and safety ambitions into points that can be accumulated and points can be optimised. And once something can be optimised, it can be gamed - even unintentionally.

Design teams become fluent in the matrix. They know which credits are “low effort, high return.” They understand where marginal cost yields maximum rating uplift. A green roof here. A cycle storage upgrade there. A carefully specified material swap that earns an extra few credits.

None of these are inherently bad. Many are positive. But the question is whether they add up to meaningful change - or simply enough change to achieve the badge. Sustainability should not a checklist. It is performance over time.

Long term accountability

A building can achieve a high certification rating at design stage and still perform poorly in operation. Energy models can look pristine on paper and drift dramatically once the building is occupied. Occupant behaviour, maintenance regimes and system commissioning often matter more than design-stage credits - yet certification rarely follows the building closely enough to enforce long-term accountability.

Safety raises an even more nuanced issue because most environmental certification systems were not designed primarily as safety tools. They may incorporate aspects of health and wellbeing - daylight, air quality, materials - but they are not substitutes for robust fire engineering, structural integrity or operational risk management.

And yet there is sometimes an unspoken halo effect. A certified building feels safer because it feels better designed. Investors and tenants may conflate environmental credentials with overall quality. That assumption can be dangerous.

New risks

A sustainable building that is difficult to maintain, complex to operate or poorly understood by its facilities team can create new risks. Sophisticated systems demand sophisticated management. Innovation without clarity can introduce failure points that only become visible years later. This is not an argument against certification. It is an argument against complacency.

The best projects use BREEAM or LEED as a framework - not a trophy. They treat the credits as prompts for better thinking, not targets to be hit at minimum cost. They go beyond the matrix when it makes sense. They prioritise operational performance over design-stage optics. The weaker projects treat certification as reputational insurance. Once the plaque is secured, the job is considered done.

There is also a wider industry question about proportionality. Certification carries cost - consultancy fees, documentation time, assessment processes. For major commercial schemes, that cost may be marginal relative to overall value. For smaller developments, it can be significant.

Does the return justify the burden? Or does certification sometimes become another layer of compliance that favours large, well-resourced developers while excluding smaller players from the “green” conversation?

Perhaps the real value of systems like BREEAM and LEED lies less in the badge itself and more in the discipline they introduced. They forced the industry to measure. They gave lenders and planners a shorthand for environmental ambition. They moved sustainability from aspiration to assessment. But measurement is not the same as impact.

The next phase for the built environment cannot be about higher badges alone. It must be about verified performance - in-use energy data, measurable carbon reduction, demonstrable resilience. It must ask whether buildings remain efficient five or ten years after handover, not just whether they were designed to be.

If certification evolves to focus more heavily on operational outcomes, transparency and long-term accountability, it will continue to play a meaningful role. If it remains primarily a design-stage scoring exercise, it risks becoming little more than a well-intentioned ritual.

The industry should be honest with itself. A plaque in reception does not make a building sustainable. Nor does it guarantee safety. At best, certification is a starting point - a structured nudge in the right direction. What really matters is what happens after the auditors leave.