EU Level(s) Framework

Level(s) is the European Commission’s voluntary assessment and reporting framework for measuring building sustainability through common life-cycle indicators.

Also known as: Level(s); Level(s) common framework; EU framework for sustainable buildings

Understand This First

• Whole-Life Carbon Assessment — the carbon-accounting frame behind indicator 1.2.
• Material Passport — the project evidence layer that can feed material and lifespan indicators.
• Building Resource Passport (BRP) — the asset-level summary record that can help owners report building-resource evidence.

Context

A project team can claim a building is circular in many incompatible ways. One consultant may emphasize whole-life carbon, another construction waste, another adaptability, another indoor environmental quality, and another future value. All of those questions matter, but they don’t become comparable merely because each team calls its work sustainable.

Level(s) is the European Commission’s attempt to give that conversation a common method. It was developed by the Joint Research Centre after the Commission’s resource-efficiency work on the building sector, tested in a beta phase from 2018 to 2020, and published as an official framework with user manuals and indicator guidance. It doesn’t certify a building. It gives project teams, public clients, rating schemes, lenders, and policy actors a shared set of indicators and reporting levels.

For circular construction, Level(s) matters because it sits between broad policy and project evidence. The circular-economy language becomes operational only when a team can say which materials were quantified, which waste streams were tracked, whether the building can adapt, whether elements can be deconstructed, and how those claims were measured.

Problem

The built environment has too many sustainability scorecards and not enough common measurement. A client can ask for BREEAM, LEED, DGNB, an embodied-carbon study, a circularity statement, a public-procurement response, and a finance taxonomy screening, then discover that the same building has been described through different units, boundaries, and evidence standards.

That fragmentation creates two practical problems. First, teams waste time translating between methods instead of improving the building. Second, weak circularity claims can hide behind method choice. A project can report diverted demolition waste while ignoring design for future deconstruction, or report energy efficiency while leaving embodied carbon outside the frame.

Level(s) answers a narrower question: what common European reporting structure can help different actors assess building performance over the life cycle without pretending that one score captures everything?

Forces

• Project teams need a usable method. A framework that only works for research projects won’t survive design meetings, tenders, cost plans, or handover.
• Comparability needs stable indicators. Public clients, rating schemes, and lenders can’t compare buildings if every team chooses its own unit and boundary.
• Circularity crosses disciplines. Materials, waste, adaptability, deconstruction, carbon, comfort, water, risk, and value have to be assessed together without being collapsed into one vague claim.
• Evidence maturity varies by stage. Concept design can support qualitative screening, while detailed design and in-use reporting need quantities, calculations, and measured data.
• Voluntary frameworks can be overread. Level(s) can structure evidence, but it doesn’t replace regulation, certification decisions, engineering judgment, or local code compliance.

Definition

Level(s) is a voluntary EU common framework of core indicators for assessing the sustainability performance of office and residential buildings. Its official structure has six macro-objectives and sixteen indicators. The macro-objectives cover greenhouse-gas emissions across the life cycle, resource-efficient and circular material life cycles, efficient water use, healthy and comfortable spaces, adaptation and resilience to climate change, and optimized life-cycle cost and value.

The framework is organized around three reporting levels.

That level structure is one reason Level(s) is useful to practitioners. It doesn’t demand final-grade evidence before a project has a design. It lets a team start with a client discussion at concept stage, then move toward measured quantities, whole-life calculations, waste records, and as-built evidence as the project matures.

For circular construction, the second macro-objective is the obvious anchor. Its four indicators cover bill of quantities, materials and lifespans; construction and demolition waste and materials; design for adaptability and renovation; and design for deconstruction, reuse, and recycling. Those indicators translate circular language into questions a team can answer: what is in the building, how long will it last, what waste will the project create, how can the building change, and what can be removed later?

Level(s) is broader than circularity, though. Indicator 1.2 asks for life-cycle global warming potential, which connects circular material choices to Whole-Life Carbon Assessment. The water, comfort, resilience, and cost/value indicators stop teams from treating material recovery as the only performance issue. A circular building that overheats, wastes water, creates poor indoor conditions, or can’t survive plausible climate stress has not solved the building problem.

How It Plays Out

A public client preparing a procurement brief can use Level(s) before design begins. At Level 1, the client and design team choose the indicators that matter: whole-life carbon, material quantities and lifespans, deconstruction potential, water use, resilience, and life-cycle cost. The brief then asks bidders to explain how they will produce evidence at later stages. This is a better question than asking for a generic circularity narrative, because it names the data path.

An architect and cost consultant comparing structure options can use Level(s) at Level 2. A retained frame, a new steel frame, a mass-timber option, and a hybrid system can be compared through life-cycle global warming potential, material quantities, service life assumptions, deconstruction potential, and life-cycle cost. The result still requires judgment. But the judgment is attached to declared indicators rather than to a one-page sustainability claim.

A contractor working toward handover can use the framework to protect evidence during substitutions. If the design-stage material quantities, waste assumptions, and deconstruction claims are disconnected from procurement records, the Level 2 model will drift from the actual building. Level 3 forces the team to ask what was installed, what was measured, what changed, and what evidence the owner receives.

A rating-system operator or public authority can map its own requirements against Level(s). The Commission’s 2021 publication for assessment and certification schemes frames Level(s) as a way to understand complementarity rather than replacement. That matters. A project may still pursue BREEAM, LEED, or DGNB, but Level(s) gives the EU policy reference point those systems can align with.

A lender or taxonomy reviewer can also use Level(s) as a translation layer. The Commission’s own quick introduction says Level(s) guides part of the technical screening criteria used to identify buildings for sustainable finance. That doesn’t make a building financeable by itself. It does mean a project team that reports through Level(s) may have cleaner evidence when a loan, bond, or disclosure framework asks for life-cycle performance.

Consequences

Benefits

• Gives European building teams a common reporting language across carbon, circular materials, water, indoor quality, resilience, and life-cycle value.
• Converts circularity from a broad claim into specific indicators for quantities, lifespans, construction and demolition waste, adaptability, and deconstruction.
• Works across project maturity: concept screening, detailed design and construction reporting, then as-built and in-use follow-up.
• Helps rating schemes, public procurement, sustainable-finance criteria, and project teams align without requiring every actor to use the same certification system.
• Makes evidence gaps visible. If a team can’t supply material quantities, lifespan assumptions, waste destinations, or deconstruction logic, the circularity claim weakens.

Liabilities

• Adds reporting work, especially where the project team has weak quantity data, no material-passport discipline, or late procurement substitutions.
• Can be mistaken for a legal or certification requirement when it is a voluntary framework unless another scheme or authority adopts it.
• Doesn’t solve data interoperability on its own. Teams still need compatible BIM records, product data, material passports, owner systems, and update responsibility.
• May encourage indicator compliance without design ambition if the team treats the framework as paperwork rather than a way to test options.
• Requires careful boundary control. A Level(s)-aligned report is only useful if the life-cycle stages, units, assumptions, and evidence quality are clear.

Related Patterns

Sources

• The European Commission’s quick introduction to Level(s) describes Level(s) as an assessment and reporting tool, lists the six macro-objectives and sixteen indicators, and explains the three levels of application.
• The Joint Research Centre’s Level(s) common framework document library publishes User Manual 1, User Manual 2, and the User Manual 3 indicator documents, including the circular-material-life-cycle indicators 2.1 through 2.4.
• European Commission Directorate-General for Environment, Level(s), A common language for building assessment, Publications Office of the European Union, 2021, explains how Level(s) complements assessment and certification schemes in the EU.
• Nicholas Dodd, Shane Donatello, Mauro Cordella, and Catherine De Wolf, Level(s) beta test phase analysis: Identification of horizontal themes and necessary technical updates from user survey feedback, Joint Research Centre, 2021, summarizes the 2018 to 2020 beta testing of Level(s) across registered building projects.
• The European Commission’s Start using Level(s) page points practitioners to the user manuals and explains how the manual set supports project implementation.