A major barrier to the design of low-carbon buildings is lack of insight into the success and failure of completed construction projects. LESSONS is an innovative web based design tool, containing a database of completed construction projects. Practitioners will be able to search for ‘Lessons’ from past projects to positively influence their new designs. Practitioners will be able to share knowledge by uploading ‘Lessons’ from their completed projects.

Lessons will include information about building type, location, floor area, energy, and environmental performance. It will also have the functionality to upload 3D design models, containing information on energy use, CO2 emissions, solar, day lighting, airflow and system design. The models can be downloaded from the website, allowing ease of application of the design decisions to a similar building under consideration. This will allow for faster formulation and evaluation of appropriate schematic and detailed designs.

A designer orientated relational database will give practitioners access to both quantitative knowledge and qualitative knowledge in a way that is suitably integrated with their desktop. Furthermore, lessons learnt while trying to meet Government targets (e.g. CSH levels 4+) will be better disseminated through the proposed tool, giving both the experienced and the novice practitioner easy access to a large body of design knowhow, allowing them to accelerate and improve the quality of low-carbon building design.

The modular software architecture will enable continuous expansion of the database so as to maximize the scope, frequency and quality of the design tool. The initial tool has been developed for new build and existing domestic and school buildings. However, the early experience gained will allow the tool to be extended in the future to other building types such as retail and commercial, and other areas of sustainability including design of water systems.