Case study
Three AI agents designed for BREEAM, embodied carbon and SAP
Consult Sustain's consultants were spending days on data entry: checking BREEAM evidence, mapping bills of quantities into One Click LCA and measuring drawings for SAP. A discovery workshop pinned down where the hours went, and we designed three AI agents that do the extraction and leave the judgement to the consultant.
2025–26
- 3–5 days
- mapping each bill of quantities into One Click LCA by handbefore
- 10–12
- embodied-carbon projects a yearbefore
- 2+ hours
- measuring a typical house from drawings before SAP input beginsbefore
The challenge
Consult Sustain's technical work runs on repetitive data handling. Every piece of BREEAM evidence has to be checked against the manual, and the credit matrix updated and reissued after each check, throughout design and construction. Embodied-carbon assessments mean matching hundreds of bill-of-quantities lines, described differently by every QS ("Steel upstands Item A"), to One Click LCA's material database. For SAP, assessors measure walls, windows and floor areas from DWG drawings by hand across hundreds of units a month, with Part L changes coming. Senior consultants were spending their days on data entry instead of advising clients.
What we did
- Discovery: a workshop with the consultants to map the BREEAM, embodied-carbon and SAP processes step by step and find where the time went
- 2025 — real project material gathered to design against: BREEAM evidence and pre-assessments, QS cost plans, One Click LCA import templates, DWG house types and SAP worksheets
- Design: one agent per problem, each built around a human review step, with example review screens
- January 2026 — designs and a delivery approach for all three agents presented, with three-week sprint reviews against real projects
What we built
Three agents that extract, map and pre-populate, and a consultant who approves. Each flags its own uncertain results for review, so compliance and carbon decisions stay with the people accountable for them.
- BREEAM evidence matched to credits
- Credit matrix updated from approved evidence
- BoQ lines mapped to One Click LCA materials
- Direct export to One Click LCA
- Wall, window and floor measurements from DWGs
- Confidence scoring with human review throughout
The result
Consult Sustain came out of discovery with three agent designs, each aimed at a cost it could measure: three to five days of mapping per carbon assessment, over two hours of measuring per house before SAP input begins, and a BREEAM matrix that is hard to keep current. The drawing measurement agent was designed to extend into worksheet population and SAP software entry as its accuracy is proven, and to adapt as the Part L methodology changes.