Buildings have an impact on the environment at all stages of their life cycle; material production, construction, operation & repair and demolition stage. The impact in terms of energy and carbon is well documented at present with approximately 40-50% of global energy consumption for operational energy requirements and 30% of global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions.

While operational energy efficiency has traditionally received considerable attention from the government, building related professional bodies and research community, the embodied energy portion of Built Environment assets tended to be neglected . Therefore, recent attention has been shifted towards increasing the knowledge of whole lifecycle energy efficiency.

Methods to estimate whole life cycle energy consumption are well recognised, but they are time consuming and comprehensive analytical procedures. Numerous studies have looked into developing tools to make the estimation process simple. However, none of them have resulted in estimating whole life cycle energy or making it easy for stakeholders or professional to engage with . In this research project with the financial assistance from CDBB the research team has developed a unique parametric design based methodology for estimating total energy use in a building utilising BIM (Buidling Information Modelling) frameworks and protocols. Results from the work have indicated that embodied energy can be much more significant in the first few phases of the buildings life cycle, and material selection can be addressed within a parametric model .In addition the funding allowed for a unique multidisciplinary research approach for technologies such as BIM and virtual reality can be used to communicate the message of addressing the overall aims of CDBB in enhancing the performance of the built environment and the cities and communities it serves.