About Balanced Value is about making ‘balanced value’ judgments in design and specification – incorporating issues of functional performance with society, environment and economics (the sustainability ‘triple bottom-line’). Balanced Value makes the design and specification decision process more transparent, and allows the influencing issues of those decisions to be better understood. Balanced Value is aimed at knowledgeable practitioners, who want to incorporate functional performance and triple bottom line issues into their decision-making process. Such practitioners can be restricted from bringing their own knowledge and priorities into the decision making process by using tools which may have obscured and pre-defined assumptions, issues or prejudices. Balanced Value provides a Toolbox and decision-making Framework for professionals seeking to take decisions on a ‘balanced value’ basis. These allow users to utilise their knowledge of project priorities to inform the decision-making process, and provide a directory of expert information sources to guide the user in validating and expanding his/her own knowledge-base. The Balanced Value Toolbox The Toolbox allows practitioners to work out which tools and methodologies are most appropriate to their specific situation. The Balanced Value Toolbox is a directory of tools and methodologies that contain information about, and help make decisions regarding, societal, environmental, economic and performance issues. Users go to the Toolbox to find out which tools contain what sorts of information. Confusion currently exists regarding what it is that different tools actually do – The Balanced Value Toolbox does away with this, and allows practitioners to select the tools that are most useful to them. The Balanced Value Framework The Framework is the means by which design and specification decisions can be compared on a ‘balanced value’ basis. This is done by incorporating user-defined weightings, based on project-specific priorities, into the Framework. Multi-criteria decision-making methodologies are the means by which comparable options are arrived at. The result is that users can identify and weight their own priorities, and are able to see how these affect their options appraisals in a simple way – despite the complexity of the techniques being employed. Research Approach The Balanced Value research approach draws on currently available methodologies, tools, practices and Key Performance Indicators from across construction and other industries. The widest possible range of tools that facilitate decision-making on the basis of environmental, societal, economic or performance criteria have been reviewed. These are documented within the Balanced Value Toolbox. To complement the Toolbox, a Framework has been developed using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis methodologies. Each of the 4 value types (environmental, societal, economic & performance) are weighted against each other. This will allow a ‘balanced’ value-judgement of the available options to be achieved. Balanced Value, The Balanced Value Framework, and The Balanced Value Toolbox are the result of a collaborative project, part-funded by the UK Government through the DTI Partners in Innovation programme.