Professionals’ knowledge and use of environmental assessment in an architectural competition

ABSTRACT In early design phases, architects, landscape architects and urban planners are key actors whose decisions determine the environmental impact of planning and building projects. Environmental and sustainability assessment tools for buildings and neighbourhoods have been developed to promote sustainable building, but their usage has not been thoroughly evaluated. This study investigated self-reported knowledge and usage of such tools among competitors and jury group from 10 European countries involved in the international architectural competition ‘A New City Centre for Kiruna’ in Sweden. The questionnaire revealed that 13% used environmental assessment tools or management systems in the competition, although 47% had used them previously. Tool users reported greater knowledge of how to handle environmental impacts than non-users. However, the self-rated experience of handling various environmental impacts, in the competition and in general, was low for both groups. Nevertheless, the self-rated importance of environmental impacts was high among all participants. Based on this study, it is concluded that environmental assessment tools, issues and goals can be better integrated into the processes of early design in planning and building projects, and in architectural competitions. Furthermore, to limit environmental impacts in building and planning projects, professionals need to be educated about environmental strategies and solutions.


Introduction
Background Neighbourhood and building environmental assessment tools (NBEATs) NBEATs have been developed to guide decision-makers in the property sector on how to assess the environmental performance of buildings. These 'tools ' (or 'methods', 'systems' or 'schemes') are one kind of instrument for making informed design decisions that can support more sustainable development. Since the introduction of building environmental assessment tools in the 1990s, their number has increased rapidly (Cole & Valdebenito, 2013;Forsberg & von Malmborg, 2004;Sundkvist et al., 2006). Sustainability aspects, including social and economic issues, have been integrated and in the past decade tools for neighbourhoods and cities have also been developed. In the present study, NBEATs includes a large group of different kinds of tools, such as rating schemes covering assessment of the environmental impact of neighbourhoods and buildings (e.g., checklists, calculators, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM)) and performance-based tools (e.g., energy simulation tools, life cycle assessment (LCA) methods). Gowri (2004) adopted a wider interpretation and also included knowledge-based methods (e.g., guidelines), which are not included here.
NBEATs deal with defining what environmental architecture really means, and how to operationalize it. Influencing the knowledge and use of NBEATs is thus one way to spread knowledge about environmental design, increasing environmental awareness and promoting sustainable buildings. Using NBEATs might also give added value; they can facilitate work with environmental aspects in projects by creating a common language and by integrating environmental aspects into the project process (Brown, Malmqvist, & Wintzell, 2015). Therefore, NBEATs not only influence how certified buildings are designed but also can potentially influence how NBEAT users design non-certified buildings and neighbourhoods.
Previous studies on NBEATs have focused on the characteristics of the assessment tools and their content, weighting system, structure (Wallhagen, Glaumann, Eriksson, & Westerberg, 2013) and influence on building projects, environmental aspects included, indicators used and methodological aspects in assessment tools for buildings (Cole, 2005(Cole, , 2006Ding, 2008;Haapio & Viitaniemi, 2008;Kajikawa, Inoue, & Goh, 2011;Todd, Crawley, Geissler, & Lindsey, 2001;Wallhagen & Glaumann, 2011;Wallhagen et al., 2013;Zhenhong, Wennersten, & Assefa, 2006) and assessment tools for neighbourhoods (Alyami & Rezgui, 2012;Nguyen & Altan, 2011;Sev, 2011). The studies have focused either on tool content, assessment results and refinements of existing methods or on a comparison of the tools, and their environmental benefit has been questioned (Bribián, Uson, & Scarpellini, 2009;Bowyer, Howe, Fernholz, & Lindburg, 2006;Scheuer & Keoleian, 2002). There is ongoing discussion among researchers and other tool developers on how to improve these NBEATs and lately European and international standards have also been developed for the assessment of environmental performance of buildings, such as EN 15978 (CEN, 2011a), EN 15643-1 (CEN, 2010) and EN 15643-2 (CEN, 2011b). Implementation of similar indicators into European Union frameworks is being considered (European Commission, 2014). The number of buildings being rated and certified has been studied (Cole & Valdebendito, 2013) and is often reported to the public when tools are presented (Gray, 2014). However, 'little attention is paid to the people and processes responsible for using the tools' (Schweber, 2013, p. 130) and little is known about the actual uptake, use and knowledge of NBEATs and associated environmental aspects among architects, urban planners and other professionals involved in the building and property sector. Likewise, there is a knowledge gap about the use of NBEATs in early design phases, where they can have a large influence over the final result. Moreover, architectural competitions can lead and inspire architectural innovation and design (Kazemian & Rönn, 2009), but the actual use of NBEATs in these types of settings has not been studied thoroughly.
One of the few studies looking at the uptake of NBEATS concluded that among architects in the UK working with sustainable housing design practices, 12% had expert knowledge in the use and implementation of the Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH), 35% were very knowledgeable and 53% had some knowledge (Baba, Mahdjoubi, Olomolaiye, & Booth, 2012). However, the study did not address the knowledge level among architects not working in sustainable practices and recommended sampling other professionals as an area for further research. Other studies concerning the use of environmental management systems (EMS) show that they have been widely adopted and integrated by architects and other actors within the construction industry in Sweden (Gluch & Räisänen, 2012;Gluch, Gustafsson, Thuvander, & Baumann, 2014), but the use of NBEATs has not been studied.

Importance of the early design process
Research has demonstrated the importance of environmental and sustainability aspects being included early in the design process (Basbagill, Flager, Lepech, & Fischer, 2013;Kohler & Moffatt, 2003;Malmqvist et al., 2011;Russell-Smith, Lepech, Fruchter, & Littman, 2015). This is because important decisions made at early stages can either facilitate or hinder fulfilment of environmental and sustainability goals (Elforgani & Rahmat, 2012;Russell-Smith et al., 2015). These decisions influence the life cycle environmental impact and the local environment and daily life for the building habitants for a long time (Rohracher, 2001). Moreover, using NBEATs in early design phases is one way to ensure that sustainability issues are addressed (Brown et al., 2015).
How urban areas are designed, built and managed varies with project and country context. It is also the result of a complex decision and design process with different stakeholders including the private sector, municipalities and planning authorities. In the early phases, when the programming, planning and design of the buildings and property are carried out, the architects, landscape architects and urban planners (including engineers, traffic planners and other persons working with urban planning) are key actors. All these 'professionals' play an important role in the design and are the stakeholders most involved in the whole process (Chen, Pitts, & Ward, 2008;Elforgani & Rahmat, 2010). As they operationalize goals, ideas and programmes into physical form and communicate and work together with the other stakeholders involved, such as technical consultants, contractors and property owners, they are influential stakeholders. Elforgani and Rahmat (2010) concluded that they are also those most involved during the design process of sustainable buildings. Indeed, they are key stakeholders who can change the environmental inertia in the construction sector, e.g., in Sweden (Gluch et al., 2014), and design and plan future environmentally sustainable urban areas, cities, neighbourhoods and buildings.

Architectural competition: innovation and early design
The architectural competition is a specific setting in which candidates, i.e., architects, landscape architects and/or urban planners, compete for the optimal design solution. These competitors are informed about the project through the competition programme and the proposals are evaluated by a jury, which selects the winning proposal (Rönn, 2011). The architectural competition can be a setting for innovation, challenging the designers to go beyond conventional ideas and create new inventions and designs (Manzoni, Morris, & Smyth, 2012). Furthermore, all competition proposals, not only the winning one, can inspire other projects. Architectural competitions are highlighted as an arena for new ideas, innovation and originality (Kazemian & Rönn, 2009). The process is usually well structured and the proposals are presented in public, often accompanied by media attention.
The lack of ability to stimulate innovation and novel approaches has been pointed out as the reason why the construction sector is slow to implement environmental aspects and reduce its environmental impact (Bossink, 2004;Gluch, 2005). Lack of innovation has been suggested as a barrier to sustainable building by Häkkinen and Belloni (2011) and a lack of market pull for green innovation within the construction industry has been found in Sweden and the Netherlands (Bossink, 2004). The architectural competition could be one way to promote sustainable innovation.
The decision process in an architectural competition is in many ways similar to that in all architectural projects. The main differences are that there are larger numbers of architects and companies involved who formulate a number of parallel design processes for the same project, a jury evaluates the proposals and the different solutions presented, and for the competitors winning is the ultimate goal. In this process, NBEATs could be used when writing the competition programme, when designing the competition proposals and when evaluating the proposals and selecting the winner.

Aim and scope
The aim of this study was to determine how NBEATs are used, who uses them and who does not. Such information is helpful for sustainability work in the building and property sector when further developing the tools, integrating environmental issues into the early planning phases and helping professionals master sustainable building and neighbourhood design. The study investigated knowledge and use of NBEATs in an architectural competition, which represents an early design phase, among professionals involved in design and planning, such as architects, landscape architects and urban planners. Characteristics of NBEAT users were then identified and the potential connection between using NBEATs and a number of environmental considerations investigated. Aspects that the participants believed could have improved the competition proposals from an environmental point of view were also examined.

Methods
The empirical material for the study was obtained through an observational cross-sectional survey with a questionnaire conducted among the participants in the international architectural competition 'A New City Centre for Kiruna'. An internet questionnaire was e-mailed to all participants between June and October 2013. The internet tool SurveyMonkey (SurveyMonkey Inc., 2015) was used to distribute the questionnaires, and answers were entered directly into the database.
All competitors and the jury group (jury members and jury advisors) involved in the design and evaluation of competition proposals in the architectural competition were chosen as the sample, since they could all potentially benefit from using NBEATs in their work.
The names of participating competitors and of the jury group were obtained from officials in the municipality of Kiruna, the Swedish Association of Architects and the team leading companies involved. The questionnaire was followed up by three e-mail reminders and telephone contact between June and October 2013.

The competition
The architectural competition 'A New City Centre for Kiruna' involved relocation of the city centre of Kiruna, located in the arctic region of Sweden, due to expanding iron mining operations that will undermine the city. The first part comprised an open international prequalification process for which 54 teams applied. The municipality of Kiruna then chose 10 teams for participation (see Appendix A in the supplemental data online) (Kiruna Kommun, 2013). These teams were given the same prerequisites for designing a competition entry: a competition programme, maps and information regarding reindeer trails, iron mining and traffic plans. They were also given the same financial There were several reasons for choosing this specific competition for the study. It made it possible to find a sample with many respondents who had been working on the same design task, as the competition involved a large number of architects and urban planners working in an early design phase of the same project in the same period. It was an international architectural competition involving people with different backgrounds, making the sample more diverse. The prequalification process in the competition selected renowned architects with a potential interest in the sustainability goals of the competition. The participants were therefore considered to be more environmentally up to date than architects in general. Furthermore, environmental aspects were included, as the goal was 'a sustainable model city'. The participants had substantial possibilities to influence environmental issues, since the project specifically dealt with a large development, including buildings and infrastructure. Finally, the competition site had a unique setting, being located in the cold, dark arctic region. Such prerequisites and demands created challenges and potentially required the design of new, innovative solutions.

The questionnaire
The questionnaire (see Appendix B in the supplemental data online) was constructed and validated in three pilot tests with six to eight professionals as test subjects each time. They included researchers in environmental strategies, architecture and environmental engineering, senior architects, an architecture student, a landscape architect, a physical planner, a traffic planner, an engineer in physics, a civil engineer, environmental psychologists, and a language expert. The e-mail survey was in English and included a cover letter informing the recipient of the aim of the study, that participation was voluntary and that the answers would be handled in confidence, and included contact information. The questions mainly concerned knowledge and use of NBEATs (Figure 1), and environmental aspects ( Figure 2). The environmental aspects were chosen based on the content of the assessment tools: LEED for neighbourhood development, BREEAM Community and Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency (CASBEE) for Urban Development. In addition, ecosystem services and toxic materials were added, as they are important environmental aspects (Wallhagen et al., 2013). NBEATs that have been discussed in other scientific articles were chosen and the list was complemented during the pilot tests. These were a combination of rating tools (e.g., LEED), calculation tools (e.g., SimaPro), management systems (e.g., ISO 14001) and structured assessment methods (e.g., LCA). Finally, a number of questions regarding factors that could have connections to drivers for environmental design, pro-environmental behaviour, environmental building and planning, and ecological world views were included in the survey. However, such questions are not analysed in this paper.

Data analysis
The data were analysed using IBM SPSS version 22 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA) and Excel 2010 (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA, USA). Analysis of frequencies means and percentages was used to describe data and the groups analysed were: (1) NBEAT users in the competition, (2) NBEAT users in general, (3) all NBEAT users (1 + 2), (4) the jury group and (5) competitors. A t-test was used to compare means for Likert scales, assuming normal distribution. Fisher's exact test, Pearson's chisquared test, Cramer's V and correlation analysis were also used for comparisons of variables and outcomes  (Hinton, 2014). A two-sided p-value of < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.

Sample, response rate and participants
A total of 149 participants were identified for inclusion in the study: 15 participants in the jury group (eight jury members, seven jury advisors) and 134 competitors (see the flow diagram in Appendix C in the supplemental data online). The total number of complete answers was 68 (a 46% response rate). Among the competitors, there were 58 complete answers (41%) and 10 partially complete answers, while among the jury group there were 10 complete answers (four jury, six jury advisory group) (67%) and two partially complete answers (two jury) (13%).
Reasons for missing responses were: incorrect e-mail (n = 3), ended internship (n = 4), ended employment (n = 10) and parental leave (n = 4). In one case, 10 participants from the same company decided to participate through one answer from the main project leader. The most common reason for not completing the questionnaire was lack of time.
All analyses presented in this paper are based on the complete answers to the questionnaire. Individual characteristics can be found in Table 1 and external characteristics in Table 2. The participants possessed different individual and group characteristics. There was a larger representation of participants from Sweden and northern European countries. The competition language was Swedish. The most common profession was architect (53%). The age of the participants was relatively low: 50% were under 40 years of age and only 20% were aged over 50 years. The external characteristics showed a large variation in team composition among the participants. Between two and 12 participants from each team responded to the questionnaire.

Competition NBEAT users
In the competition, eight competitors and one jury group member, totalling nine (13%) of the 68 participants, used one or more of the NBEATs or EMS listed or some assessment tool. They used BREEAM (n = 3), LEED (n = 2) and Minergie (n = 2) and then DGNB (n = 1), and Miljöbyggnad ('Environmental Building') (n = 1).
Regarding the characteristics of these users, more men (n = 8, 89%) than women (n = 1, 11%) had used any NBEAT in the competition. There was a tendency for a gender difference (p = 0.14 with Fisher's exact test) as among all the respondents the women represented 33% (Table 1). There was a significant difference in education level between competition NBEAT users and non-competition NBEAT users (chi-squared test, p = 0.036). The competition NBEAT users had a formal education of five years (PhD or other), which the participants specified as multiple degrees. Participants with three or four years of university education were only found in the group that had not used assessment tools in the Kiruna project. The participants who used NBEATs in the competition were architects (n = 4) and urban planners (n = 2) and 'Other profession' (n = 2), and their ages were similar to non-tool users (mean = 43 versus 41 years; independent sample t-test, p = 0.632, chi-squared test p = 0.538).
Five competition NBEAT users were working in Sweden and the other four in Norway, Switzerland, the UK and countries outside Europe. This can be compared with the non-NBEAT users where the distribution between participants was similar: Sweden (n = 37), Norway and Denmark (n = 10) and European countries or other cities in the world (n = 12) ( Table 1).
The eight competitors who used NBEATs in the competition were working at six different companies varying in size. Five (56%) worked at companies with 5-9 employees, one at a company with 10-29 employees and two at companies with 201 or more employees. In comparison the non-NBEAT users were also working in companies with 1-4, 30-49 and 50-100 employees. The competition NBEAT users belonged to four different competition teams and six different companies. Four of them belonged to the team that won the competition. With this distribution, company size did not tend to have any clear connection to the use of assessment tools, but the competition team might have done so.
The participants who had used NBEATs were influential and had the main responsibility in the competition as: 'Leading the group' (n = 4), Working with the design of the competition proposal (n = 2) or had 'Other' responsibility which was either 'Sustainability' (n = 1), 'City analyses' (n = 1) or 'Research' (n = 1). There appeared to be more NBEAT users leading groups compared with non-NBEAT users, but a chi-squared test with six different outcomes showed no clear correlation (p = 0.472).

General knowledge and use of NBEATs
In total, 32 participants (47%) stated that they had previously used 1-6 of the NBEATs and/or EMS listed, regardless of project or when. Here three of the participants who used NBEATs in the competition were not included, as in answer to this question they answered that they had not used NBEATs previously. The reason behind this is unknown. The wording of the two response options, 'Have used it' and 'Have worked with it myself', may have been interpreted differently by those three respondents. When these three  competition NBEAT users were included in the group of general NBEAT users, in total 35 participants (51%) had used any NBEAT and/or EMS before and/or in the competition. Figure 1 shows the distribution of all answers and the tools concerned. The tools that were familiar to most participants were LEED and Green Building. However, the tool that had been most often used was BREEAM (26%, n = 18). Two participants knew about several tools and mentioned other tools for assessing land use, ecosystem services, materials and energy. In total, six of the 17 tools listed had not been used by any participant and four participants (6%) did not know any of the NBEATs or EMS listed. Knowledge about the international standard ISO 14001 and LCA was limited; 19% knew about or had used LCA and 56% knew about or had used ISO 14001. Globally, 80 architectural companies are ISO 14001 certified, all of which are Swedish (Babacus, 2015).
On excluding the four participants who had only used the EMS ISO 14001, the number of participants who had used NBEATs before and/or in the competition was 31 (46%). In the calculations reported below, when analysing NBEAT users these four participants who had only used ISO 14001 were included as 'NBEAT users'. This is because like NBEATs, ISO 14001 involves strategic work with environmental issues in projects, although from a company and not a project perspective. Therefore, it is difficult to distinguish its impact on its users from that of NBEATs. The groups used in the analysis were therefore: (1) NBEAT users in the competition (n = 9), (2) NBEAT users in general (n = 32), (3) all NBEAT users (1 + 2) (n = 35), (4) the jury group (n = 10), and (5) competitors (n = 58).

Possible correlation between use of NBEATs and environmental considerations
Self-reported knowledge about handling environmental aspects The participants who used NBEATs and EMS before and during the competition rated their knowledge about handling environmental impacts higher than the non-NBEAT users (Figure 2). Irrespective of whether the participants had used the tools listed, they self-rated their knowledge rather low on a three-level ordinal scale. The mean values were 1.9-2.7 for NBEAT users and 1.5-2.5 for non-NBEAT users. The largest difference between the two groups was a higher proportion of participants responding 'Know about it and have worked with it myself' among NBEAT users (Figure 2).
The environmental impact that the NBEAT users reported having most knowledge of was how to handle 'Good daylight conditions', followed by 'Protection of non-developed land', 'Reduction of cold and windy microclimate' and 'Energy efficient buildings'. Among the non-NBEAT users, 'Protection of non-developed land' was rated highest.
'Minimising use of toxic substances' was the environmental impact for which both groups self-rated their knowledge the lowest (Don't know about it: n = 10 among NBEAT users, n = 18 among non-NBEAT users). Among NBEAT users, knowledge of the impacts related to waste was also self-rated lowest.
For 10 of the 18 environmental aspects, the Pearson's chi-squared test showed a p-value < 0.05, meaning that there was a significant difference between NBEAT users and non-NBEAT users in self-reported knowledge about handling environmental aspects (Figure 2). Cramer's V-test indicated that 2-25% of the variation in frequencies can be explained by using or not using NBEATs. The mean values of each environmental aspect for NBEAT users and non-users ranged between 0.1 and 0.7. The smallest difference was found regarding 'Protection of non-developed land' (mean = 0.1) and the largest difference regarding 'Minimising emissions from electricity and heat production' (mean = 0.7). None of the non-NBEAT users reported working with this aspect themselves.
Working with environmental aspects in the competition When the competitors (n = 58) were asked if they had personally worked with the same environmental aspects in the competition, the results were in many ways similar to those shown in Figure 2. The NBEAT users more often worked with environmental aspects in the competition, and both NBEAT users and non-NBEAT users worked most with the environmental aspects that they self-rated having most knowledge about. However, Fisher's exact test only showed a significant difference (p < 0.05) between NBEAT users and non-NBEAT users for the environmental aspects 'Energy efficient buildings', 'Minimising emissions from electricity and heat production' and 'Minimising use of toxic substances'. Calculation of Cramer's V showed that a maximum of 10-25% of the existing variation could be explained by use of NBEATs.
For more than half the environmental aspects listed, the mean was < 0.5, i.e., more than half the respondents in each group had not worked with those environmental aspects personally. However, the average rating of the competition proposals from an environmental point of view among the competitors was rather high, 3.86 on a scale from 1 to 5.

Perceived importance of environmental impacts
The perceived importance of environmental impacts from the 'A New City Centre for Kiruna' project was high among all participants. Mean values were around 4 on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = 'Not at all important' to 5 = 'Extremely important'. Most environmental impacts were rated slightly higher among the participants who had been using NBEATs in the competition or at another time (n = 35), but the difference was statistically significant for only four environmental impacts: 'Emissions from electricity and heat production' (p = 0.013), 'Destruction of existing ecosystem services' (p = 0.038), 'Polluted storm water runoff' (p = 0.005) and 'Waste from inhabitants' (p = 0.024).
The difference in rating between different environmental impacts was not very large (mean = 3.18-4.34), but there were some differences. The seven environmental aspects that were identified as having the highest rated importance were: (1) cold and windy microclimate, (2) emissions from buildings energy use, (3) destruction of existing ecosystem services, (4) emissions from electricity and heat production, (5) use of toxic substances, (6) emissions from transport and (7) lack of daylight. Four of these, (1), (2), (6) and (7), were addressed to the largest extent in the competition programme, according to the respondents (Figure 3). By grouping the different environmental aspects into six common environmental categories and calculating means, the categories were ranked as follows: energy (4.0), local environment (4.0), transport (3.9), materials (3.9), land use and ecology (3.8), waste (3.8), and water (3.6).
For some environmental impacts there was a tendency for a correlation between the environmental impacts perceived as important and knowledge of how to handle the impacts. A correlation test on the 17 environmental impacts revealed that three had a correlation (p < 0.05). These were 'Emissions from electricity and heat production', 'Reduction of cold and windy microclimate' and 'Daylight conditions'. However, there was a substantial gap between the rating of perceived importance of the environmental impacts and knowledge about how to handle the impacts (Figure 2). Even among NBEAT users, the knowledge was low even though the importance was rated high.

Environmental issues addressed in the competition programme
The NBEAT users gave a higher rating than the non-NBEAT users regarding the extent to which the competition programme addressed environmental issues ( Figure 3). The results were analysed for the groups: (a) had used NBEATs in the competition and (b) had not used NBEATs in the competition. To determine whether there were any differences between competitors and the jury group, the results were also calculated for the groups: (c) jury group and (d) competitors. The mean value for all variables was calculated for the four groups of respondents and for all participants. The mean value for competition NBEATs users was 3.3, compared with 2.9 for non-NBEATs users. The choice of answering 'Don't know' was used by between nine and 17 participants, depending on the environmental issue. Six answered 'Don't know' to all environmental issues. A t-test for equality of means showed a significant difference between NBEAT users and non-NBEAT users only regarding 'Polluted storm water run-off', but a chi-squared test showed no significant differences. Between the jury group and competitors, a t-test showed no significant difference, but a chi-squared test showed a difference, for the issues 'Waste from inhabitants' and 'Use of non-developed land'.
The environmental issues included in the competition programme to the largest extent according to the participants were: 'Cold and windy microclimate' and 'Lack of daylight'. These two local environmental issues have a strong connection to the location of Kiruna, were clearly included in the competition programme and can be influenced by urban design and building design.

Improving competition proposals from an environmental viewpoint
To investigate drivers concerning environmental design, the participants were asked whether a number of different aspects could make their competition proposals better from an environmental point of view (Figure 4). High scores were given to the economic aspects: 'Larger budget for the competition proposal' and 'Larger budget for the whole project'. Within the top five rankings were also aspects linked in many ways to the main tasks of assessment tools: Setting targets, measurable indicators and benchmarks, and objective evaluation. These aspects were 'Higher environmental goals in the competition programme', 'If you had been able to analyse and evaluate different design proposals from an environmental point of view' and 'More measurable environmental requirements in the competition programme'.
The solution for which the most respondents answered 'Maybe' was 'If there were more subsidies for environmental solutions' (n = 38). Few responded that the influence of an expert would improve the proposals and the three last aspects in Figure 4 (linked to attitudes in society, among team members and in the company) were not considered influential.

Aspects that influence knowledge and use of NBEATs
The majority of respondents involved in the competition were aware of NBEATs and almost half had used at least one. However, the use of NBEATs and environmental management tools in early design phases was very limited among both the competitors and the jury group. Only six of 29 participants who had used tools previously chose to use them in the Kiruna architectural competition either as a design aid or for assessing the competition proposals. Since knowledge of NBEATs was rather large among the participants (Figure 2), lack of knowledge about NBEATs can be excluded as an explanatory factor. However, a number of other factors that could have had an impact on the use and knowledge of NBEATs and could increase the use of the tool in competitions were identified and are presented separately below.

Include environmental indicators in competitions
The use of NBEATs would naturally increase if competition programmes demanded their use. Another way to encourage competitors to work with environmental aspects and NBEATs could be to include environmental aspects to a larger extent and to use quantitative environmental indicators, criteria or benchmarks, which can be found in NBEATs. If the competition programme were to address clearly specific environmental aspects, these would more likely be dealt with by the competitors, irrespective of their previous use of NBEATs. In the Kiruna competition the importance of sustainability was highlighted, but specific environmental aspects found in NBEATs were only included in the competition programme to a limited extent ( Figure 4) and focused on 'daylight', 'cold and windy microclimate' and 'emissions from building energy use' (Figure 3). The first two were those that the competitors had worked with the most, regardless of whether or not they had used NBEATs. However, 'Emissions from building energy use' was clearly an environmental aspect that NBEAT users had been working with much more than non-NBEAT users (p = 0.01). The importance of clearer and more quantitative environmental goals in the competition programme was also an action which the participants believed would lead to competition proposals being better from an environmental point of view (Figure 4).
The limited use of environmental criteria in the competition can be explained by the present gap between the ways in which NBEATs assess different environmental aspects (with criteria, indicators and benchmarks) and the way in which competition proposals are evaluated by a jury in an architectural competition (with jury members' knowledge and experience; Kazemian & Rönn, 2009;Rönn, 2008). Jury evaluation is of a qualitative nature; many aspects are considered and the proposal's potential is something that is taken into account. NBEATs, on the other hand, are rather quantitative. However, they can provide useful inspiration and be used in the competition, when writing the competition programme and its targets, when designing the proposals and when evaluating the proposals and selecting the winner.
Increase capabilities to handle environmental impacts Increased knowledge regarding how to handle environmental impacts may decrease the environmental impact from buildings and influence the use of NBEATs. As environmental assessment and design are complex subjects, measures on several levels are suggested here. Green building indicators can be difficult to understand and calculations can be demanding. In a survey in Taiwan, 63% of respondents (developers, architects, contractors, interior designers and consultants) had difficulty in understanding the formulation of each green building indicator and 54% did not have experience in calculating the formulas in the Taiwan Green Building and Labelling System (Tam, 2007). In the same way, knowing how to handle environmental impacts and meeting the criteria are difficult. This could be a reason why the participants in this paper self-reported a rather low level of knowledge about handling environmental impacts. Therefore, it is important somehow to increase this knowledge. Training for NBEAT users and others can be one way. The training courses available, by whom, in what format and how they reach out to the professionals are then crucial.
NBEATs, that like today, combine complexity with usability might need to focus more on how to educate users about how to handle environmental impacts and design sustainable buildings and neighbourhoods. This can be done directly in the tools, as an additional manual, as integrated assessment in computer programmes and building information models (BIMs), or as informative case studies about assessed projects, similar to the Green Building Challenge reports (iiSBE Canada, 2015). Follow-up of the results and the choice of indicators are also important because knowledge gained through use of tools can be passed forward to others and drive change.
Educating potential users on handling environmental impacts can also be done outside NBEATs, for example by green building councils or in university education of architects, landscape architects and urban planners. This is already done today, but the importance of suitable training is highlighted in this study, as the level of formal education showed a correlation with use of NBEATs in the competition.
Continuing education for practitioners, organized by universities, architectural organizations or NBEAT organizations, is needed to reach out to the whole group of professionals, irrespective of age and practical experience. Closer contact between tool developers, practitioners and students could provide the latter two groups with information about the latest versions of NBEATs and generate continuous dialogue about what could be improved with the tools.
The results showed that the participants' understanding varied for different environmental aspects. Waste, water, toxic substances and construction site impacts were issues that the participants reported having the lowest level of knowledge about. Extra attention should be given to how these issues can be integrated into NBEATs and education. The low level of knowledge about LCA should also be addressed. The reason behind the lack of knowledge regarding the environmental aspects is not clear from the results and further investigations on this issue are needed.
Include environmental aspects that matter Interestingly, some of the environmental aspects that the competitors, the jury group and the competition programme rated as the most important environmental aspects in the Kiruna city centre project are often not included in NBEATs. These are (1) destruction of existing ecosystem services, (2) cold and windy microclimate, (3) lack of daylight and (4) use of toxic substances. If the NBEATs had included these aspects, then the chances of competitors and the jury having used the tools could have increased. The importance of the assessment result and its usefulness could be questioned if the NBEATs do not conform with users' values. This idea is supported on a more general level by, for example, Hines, Hungerford, and Tomera (1987) and Kollmuss and Agyeman (2002), who claim that values can be important for pro-environmental behaviour. Making it possible to adopt the tools to local conditions might help them cover the fields that the competition programme focused on. This is already considered in some NBEATs, e.g., LEED, by 'Regional priority credits'.

NBEATs targeting experts and others
The rather low use of NBEATs and high level of education among the users in this case study indicate that, so far, use of these tools is confined to a small group of experts in the field of environmental building. This opens the way for discussion on whether the tools should target experts or strive for wider use and uptake. It can be helpful and important to have experts such as BREEAMaccredited assessors, LEED-accredited professionals, other environmental consultants or a person in a company specialized in environmental assessment, which can ensure that the NBEATs are implemented in the correct way. However, a comment from one participant in the jury group shows the problem of only having a limited number of specialists. 'It is also frustrating to see that once a team composed of various specialists has won, the specialists are kicked out and the leading architecture office takes it all.' However, in some situations, cultures and building projects, such as in the early design phases, it can be an advantage if those involved in a project have good knowledge of handling environmental impacts. Public environmental awareness is also important, since customer demand is one driver for sustainable building (Luttropp & Lagerstedt, 2006;Tang & Ng, 2014).

Other barriers and drivers
Another barrier that can be discussed, even though it did not appear in the results, is that NBEATs have not been specifically designed for use in a competition setting. Even though they can be used in early design phases, existing NBEATs are often rather technical and quantitative tools that demand technical data and documents with the focus on details that seldom exist in these early design phases. This can make them time consuming (Crawley & Aho, 1999) and therefore expensive to use. In addition, they may not fit well with the more humanistic and artistic architectural design culture. Moreover, NBEATs in general have a focus on evaluation and not design, are not intended to be used only in the early design phases (Zeiler, Maaijen, & Maassen, 2012), and assessments are sometimes made after the design has been decided (Schlueter & Thesseling, 2009;Schweber & Haroglu, 2014). Furthermore, the tools are general in the sense that they are not solely developed and targeted towards architects, landscape architects and urban planners as a tool to assist in environmental decisions in the design phase. They are also designed to be used by other stakeholders, such as developers, to fit into projects at many different stages, and, not least, to promote marketing of green buildings.
Tools including a high number of features indicators, such as BREEAM, have also been criticized for being innovation hindering (Cole, 2005;Wallhagen & Glaumann, 2011). Incorporating NBEATs with detailed criteria into competitions and in early design phases in general might also be difficult because it may inhibit the creative and innovative process. Some designers might flinch when faced with additional design criteria, whereas others might see it as a challenge. Furthermore, it should be remembered that assessment tools for neighbourhoods are still quite new and have not been used for as long as tools for buildings. However, to better understand the limited use of NBEATs in architectural competitions, in-depth interviews with open-ended questions need to be performed.

Influence of NBEATs
Participants who had been using NBEATs had a higher self-rated level of knowledge about handling environmental impacts, but the difference was only significant for some environmental aspects (Figure 2). The environmental aspects for which a significant difference was found (p < 0.05) (Figure 2) were aspects that are both common and uncommon in NBEATs, such as 'Energy efficient buildings', which is included in NBEATs, and 'Cold and windy microclimate', which is not. It is therefore unclear to what extent the use of NBEATs improves knowledge, even though they contain environmental criteria and often specify what to do in order to fulfil the criteria, such as adding specific features, performing a specific procedure or calculating the performance (Wallhagen et al., 2013). If the tools work as planned, the tool user would have greater knowledge about how to handle environmental aspects. Many participants reported that they have been working with the environmental aspects that are common in NBEATs, even though they have never used any NBEAT. This demonstrates that there are other ways to gain knowledge and work with environmental aspects, without necessarily using NBEATs. Thus, the results indicate that so far, NBEATs seem to not have been very influential in forming the responding professionals' ideas on what constitutes environmental buildings. Further research is needed to investigate the impact of NBEATs on users in more detail.

Self-reported drivers
The participants rated a number of aspects considered possible drivers that could improve the design from an environmental point of view. They placed strong emphasis on the economic aspects, knowledge about environmental strategies and solutions, and the availability of methods and tools. Häkkinen and Belloni (2011) found the same barriers. Similar factors have also been reported as possible barriers to sustainable housing (Űrge-Vorsatz & Koeppel, 2007), expressed as economic and financial barriers, hidden costs and information barriers. Easily available NBEATs that can be used with low additional costs and contain strategies and solutions for environmental design are needed.
Legislation and subsidies were not rated as having a high impact and organizational constraints were rated even lower. Research by Hargreaves (2008) indicates that the team and the company are important for pro-environmental behaviour, while Ürge-Vorsatz and Koeppel (2007) also pinpointed organizational constraints. Further research is needed to find out why these aspects not are rated as highly among the respondents.

Practical relevance of research findings
The results in this paper are relevant for NBEAT developers and those organizing architectural competitions, and can be of interest to other actors such as the education system, educationalists, policy-makers, practitioners and society. To make NBEATs easier to use in early design phases and competition settings, tool developers who are developing, administering and marketing NBEATs could continue working with the content, format and communication of these tools. Criteria and indicators should be suitable for use by both competitors and the jury to evaluate design proposals. Perhaps simplified or limited versions are needed. As there is large variation among NBEATs, specific recommendations are difficult to make, but this study showed that it is important that knowledge on handling environmental impacts is delivered and embedded.
Architectural competition organizers should consider stating clearer objectives in the competition programme. These could be inspired by specific criteria and indicators used in NBEATs and sustainability checklists, such as 'The Sustainability Matrix' (Gething & Bordass, 2006). Simply stating the importance of environmental impacts might not make any difference, as environmental impacts are already considered important by competitors and jury members.
In the education system, environmental aspects need to be integrated into design and not treated as a separate subject unconnected to architecture. The focus should not be on the importance of the environmental impacts, as that is already known by the architects, landscape architects and urban planners, but on strategies and solutions for decreasing the environmental impacts from buildings and neighbourhoods. Because of the low use of NBEATs among women in the competition in the present study, attention should be given to gender issues when providing education about NBEATs.
Using NBEATs as a way of making policy without using legislation or economic incentives (Schweber, 2013) might not have the intended effect, as their use is far from common practice. However, the voluntary tools can be made 'compulsory' through market pressure and procurement, which is the case primarily within niche markets of commercial properties (Brown et al., 2015). In the UK, the tool Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH) had become almost compulsory when building governmentfunded residential buildings (DCLG, 2006;Osmani & O'Reilly, 2009), and buildings that do not apply it automatically receive the lowest rating. From a policy perspective, the low use of NBEATs should be kept in mind by those wanting to work for quick change towards a more sustainable society. Their use perhaps needs to be combined with other supplementary actions that can be used to reach the target of a more sustainable society.
For architects, landscape architects and urban planners the results of the present study show that in this architectural competition there are few professionals skilled in handling environmental aspects or with knowledge of NBEATs. It can be a competitive advantage to be an expert in this field if the market demands more sustainable buildings.

Limitations
Having a larger number of respondents answer the questionnaire would have made the results more reliable. However, for a survey among architects, with their high workloads (Dunton, 2015), the response rate of 46% was relatively high compared with that in other studies, e.g., a questionnaire survey among the UK construction industry, with a response rate of 15% (Ankrah, 2007), and a survey about the use of strategic environmental assessment, with a response rate of 2.4% (Fischer & Onyango, 2012).
One question is whether the results can be generalized to a broader context. The fact that the sample represented professionals mainly working in northern Europe and Sweden limits the generalizability of the results to other regions. The fact that the participants were mainly from renowned architectural firms could also weigh against generalizability, but there is no reason to suspect that this specific group uses tools to a lesser extent than any other group of architects, landscape architects and urban planners. In fact, they could be assumed to be in the front line regarding quality and innovation and, therefore, use tools more than others. The fact that the sample represented a large variation in individual, company and competition group characteristics (Tables 1 and 2) makes the results more generalizable. The participants represented individuals of different ages, working at companies of different sizes and working in groups of different sizes, and were not biased towards a small group of professionals.
The generalizability of the results can also be affected by the possible selection bias in who responded and who did not and whether the participants are representative. Follow-up analysis indicated that there was no specific bias for non-responders and there was nothing to indicate that individuals interested in sustainable design were more likely to respond. Some of the personal comments can be interpreted as coming from individuals with and without environmental interest.

Future perspectives
Our built environment has a great impact on the Earth. Therefore, it is extremely important to design and build buildings and cities that are more sustainable. NBEATs are considered by many to be one of the most potent and effective means of improving the performance of buildings (Cole & Valdebenito, 2013) and are sometimes portrayed as the solution to the environmental problems created by buildings and infrastructure, and a proxy for sustainable design. The results in this study are not as promising, since they show that many architects, landscape architects and planners have never used the tools. Other studies also show that certified buildings represent a small proportion of all buildings (Cidell, 2009) and among certified buildings there are not many that receive the highest rating (Todd, Pyke, & Tufts, 2013). Implementation of the tools has tended not to keep up with the global environmental problems connected to the building and property sector. This was also acknowledged in the World Sustainable Building Conference in Barcelona in 2014 which had the conference title 'Are We Moving as Quickly as We Should? It's Up to Us!' (GBCe, 2014). On the other hand, some may argue that NBEATs have had a global impact on the design, construction, and operation of buildings and neighbourhoods (Todd et al., 2013) and that the implementation of NBEATs has been very fast. The Swedish environmental assessment tool Miljöbyggnad, launched in 2010(Sweden Green Building Council, 2015, is one tool whose use has accelerated more quickly than expected. In the present study, nine participants, i.e., 21% of the 42 participants from Sweden, had been using Miljöbyggnad in 2013. Slow or fast, using NBEATs is still one important strategy to increase the design of more sustainable and environmental buildings and neighbourhoods. The present study also showed that there is already strong awareness of the importance of environmental impacts. The professionals surveyed believed that environmental considerations are important when designing cities, neighbourhoods and buildings, even if they had never used NBEATs. The highly rated importance of environmental impacts did not seem to have much connection to the use of NBEATs for most environmental aspects. Therefore, convincing people of the high importance of environmental impacts is not enough to increase the use of NBEATs. Moreover, it does not give them the skills necessary for designing 'excellent' environmental buildings, since few participants rated the aspect 'If you personally had better knowledge about environmental impacts' as something that could have improved their competition proposal from an environmental point of view (Figure 4). The interpretation is that an interest in environmental aspects does not necessarily mean using NBEATs more often and, conversely, that using tools has a small impact on how important one thinks that environmental impacts are.
Aspects that the participants rated highly for improving the environmental performance of the project (e.g., setting targets in a competition programme, setting objective criteria in a competition programme, aiding evaluation of the environmental performance of design proposals, and supporting environmental issues in the design process) were very similar to the aim of NBEATs. This confirms that NBEATs can play an important role in improving the environmental performance of design proposals. To take on this important role and function better in the design process, the tools probably also need to conform to the process in various ways and adapt to the needs of the non-technical professionals and clients who are involved in these phases. The tools should help the professionals make informed environmental decisions and hopefully inspire new sustainable solutions in the specific early design phase context where they are struggling with opposing forces 'such as artistic recognition, and market constraints, individual passion and collective collaboration, creative spark and discipline' (Manzoni et al., 2012, p. 829), the design demands and options are numerous (Luttropp & Lagerstedt, 2006), and the impact of design decisions is high (Wang, Shen, Xie, Neelamkavil, & Pardasani, 2002). Just as the tools can adapt to the present situation, the design process may need to adapt to the criteria, tools and guidelines of NBEATs. Still, it will probably always be challenging to make an valid and reliable environmental assessment of a project in an early design phase with limited and modelled data which represent the future built environment.

Conclusions
This study provides information on the self-rated views of Swedish and European architects, landscape architects and urban planners on their knowledge and use of NBEATs and other environmental aspects in the 'New City Centre for Kiruna' international architectural competition. The results from the case study revealed that knowledge of NBEATs exists, but NBEATs were still not known or used by many of the participants in the study. In the Kiruna competition, an example of an early design phase, the tools were used to a very limited extent.
Environmental issues need to be incorporated into the early phases of projects, since decisions made then are important for the total environmental impact of construction projects and planning processes. Using NBEATs can be one way to place environmental issues on the agenda. This paper discusses some strategies to increase the use of NBEATs in competitions and in early design phases. For example, environmental targets need to be specified, NBEATs need to evolve and professional knowledge on how to handle environmental impacts needs to be improved.
It is likely that NBEATs increase users' knowledge about how to handle environmental impacts, but this study showed that the impact so far is limited. There were correlations between the use of NBEATs and knowledge about how to handle environmental aspects, but there was a general lack of these skills among both NBEAT and non-NBEAT users. Only focusing on increasing the use and knowledge of NBEATs will not automatically result in a rapid increase in those skills. This highlights the importance of investing in increasing the knowledge of architects, landscape architects and urban planners in how to handle and decrease environmental impacts in planning and building projects.
An encouraging finding for the future was that environmental impacts in the Kiruna project were perceived as important, irrespective of the use of NBEATs or of whether the issues were included in the competition programme. Environmental impacts mattered to all participants in this study. Therefore, there is probably an interest in integrating environmental aspects more widely into the early planning and design phases. If NBEATs adapt and develop in order to fit into these situations and become implemented in practice, they can influence professionals, practitioners and legislation to a larger extent and contribute to more environmental building and planning. Current urban planning, design and architectural competition practice could also benefit from increased implementation of environmental aspects and NBEATs.