A practical guide to how EarthCheck's Building Planning and Design Standard approaches design certification — and how it compares with LEED v5 BD+C for projects globally.
Both LEED and EarthCheck BPDS aim to improve building sustainability outcomes. They differ meaningfully in how they get there — and what the experience looks like for your project team.
Your team works directly with EarthCheck's internal design team throughout. Submit iteratively — review findings, address gaps, refine and resubmit as many times as needed, all included in the certification fee. There's no penalty for getting it right progressively.
BPDS benchmarks are calibrated to your specific building type and geographic location — anywhere in the world. Performance targets reflect local climate, regulations, and construction norms, powered by over 500 million data points from EarthCheck's global dataset.
BPDS measures improvement against benchmarks — how you get there is up to your design team. Credits scale incrementally (e.g. 1 credit for every 10% energy reduction), making marginal improvements visible and worthwhile.
BPDS assesses the full arc — planning, design, construction management, and operational transition — as one integrated process. Knowledge transfer criteria ensure commitments carry into the life of the building.
A dedicated KPA for social, cultural and economic well-being — heritage, local employment, accessibility, and economic development assessed alongside energy and water. Sustainable development means more than resource efficiency alone.
20 credits dedicated to innovation — structured criteria for student/graduate engagement, specialist ESD support, and commercialisation of new approaches. Projects are rewarded for pushing boundaries, not just meeting thresholds.
One of the most common frustrations with design certification is the pass/fail anxiety — the sense that everything rides on a single submission. With EarthCheck BPDS, the internal design team becomes an extension of your project team. You submit evidence, receive detailed feedback, refine your approach, and resubmit — as many times as needed, at no additional cost. The goal is certification success, not gatekeeping. For teams navigating design certification for the first time, or working in markets where specialist green building consultant availability is limited, this collaborative model can make the difference between a certification that lands and one that stalls.
EDGE (Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies) serves a useful purpose as a lightweight entry point — focusing on three metrics: energy, water, and embodied energy in materials. For projects seeking a comprehensive sustainability assessment that covers waste, transport, biodiversity, social outcomes, innovation, and digital transformation — and that carries weight with investors, tenants, and ESG reporting frameworks — a broader standard is worth considering.
Both frameworks cover similar sustainability themes. The radar chart below normalises each category to show relative depth of assessment — not raw point totals.
| Assessment area | BPDS credits | LEED v5 points | How they differ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sustainability planning | 35 | 1 | BPDS requires a formal sustainability policy, project brief, multi-disciplinary team, risk management and knowledge transfer from day one. LEED addresses early-stage integration with a single "Integrative Design Process" credit. |
| Energy | 62 | 33 | Both frameworks treat energy as a primary focus. BPDS dedicates 28 credits to renewables alone and includes passive design as a distinct criterion, with credits scaling per 10% improvement against regional benchmarks. |
| Water | 28 | 9 | BPDS assesses recycling, reuse, wastewater and metering as separate criteria — particularly relevant for water-stressed regions globally. |
| Solid waste | 28 | 2 | BPDS covers construction waste, operational waste, reduction strategies and management systems as a full KPA. LEED addresses waste within its broader Materials & Resources category. |
| Site / land use / biodiversity | 25 | 11 | BPDS includes food production, soil remediation, landscaping and biodiversity as distinct criteria. Both frameworks address site sustainability — BPDS provides more granular ecological assessment. |
| Materials | 26 | 18 | BPDS includes design for disassembly (9 credits) and life-cycle assessment. LEED v5 has introduced a strong embodied carbon focus — a welcome and overdue addition to the framework. |
| Indoor environment | 19 | 13 | Broadly comparable. BPDS separates acoustic, thermal and visual comfort as individual criteria, allowing projects to demonstrate strength across each dimension of occupant wellbeing. |
| Transport | 19 | 15 | BPDS focuses on active transport infrastructure (9 credits) and end-of-trip provisions — assessing what the project provides, not just where it's located. |
| Social, cultural & economic | 18 | 3 | An entire BPDS Key Performance Area — heritage, culture, accessibility, employment and economic development. Increasingly important for ESG reporting and community licence to operate. |
| Innovation | 20 | 9 | Both frameworks reward innovation. BPDS structures it as a full KPA with criteria for talent development, process innovation and specialist engagement. |
| Total | 281 | 110 | Point scales differ — direct numerical comparison reflects scope of assessment, not difficulty |
Perhaps the most important comparison isn't what gets assessed, but what the journey looks like for your project team.
EarthCheck's internal design team works alongside your project team throughout the assessment — providing substantive guidance, detailed feedback at each submission, and practical support to help you achieve the best possible outcome. When it comes to certification itself, the process is underpinned by independent auditors, aligned to ISO 17065 principles. So you get the benefit of a collaborative working relationship during the journey, with the credibility of independent verification at the point of certification. For teams working in markets where specialist green building consultant availability is limited, or navigating design certification for the first time, this model removes a significant barrier to entry without compromising on rigour.
The full scope of what BPDS assesses. Each KPA contains mandatory criteria plus optional credits that scale with performance improvement.
Three tiers that reward going beyond minimum compliance — higher tiers require broader KPA coverage and performance above regional benchmarks.
BPDS performance targets aren't arbitrary thresholds. They're drawn from one of the largest evidence-based datasets of tourism and built environment infrastructure performance in the world.
EarthCheck benchmarks are built on decades of research and grounded in real-world data, drawing on case studies, engineering handbooks, industry surveys, and national data sets. They are updated annually by the Griffith Institute for Tourism (GIFT) at Griffith University — Australia's largest tourism research institute with over 130 academic, adjunct and PhD members. This means your project is measured against benchmarks that reflect genuine global performance, not static reference standards designed for a single market.
Benchmarks are calibrated for your specific building type — hotel, resort, convention centre, mixed-use, residential. A 500-key urban hotel is measured differently from a 30-villa eco-resort, because they should be.
Performance targets account for your project's geographic and climatic context. A development in Bangkok is benchmarked against regional leader performance for that climate zone — not against a baseline designed for temperate North America.
Benchmarks evolve with industry performance. As the global portfolio improves, benchmarks ratchet upward — ensuring that certification continues to represent genuine leadership, not yesterday's standard.
When a BPDS assessor evaluates your project's energy performance, they're comparing it against a regional leader benchmark derived from real operational data — not a theoretical calculation. When they assess water efficiency, the target reflects actual consumption patterns for your building type in your region. This is why BPDS credits scale with improvement: 1 credit for every 10% reduction beyond the benchmark. The better your project performs against real-world peers, the more recognition it receives.
EarthCheck's design team is ready to discuss how BPDS works in practice — and what the certification pathway looks like for your portfolio.
Contact EarthCheck Design