Foundation route
The Home Quality Mark One, Technical Manual SD239, England, Scotland & Wales, published by BRE in 2018 suggests that the foundation route: ‘…does not require the quantities of each construction product to be entered into the HQM materials tool. This reduces the time taken per construction product but, because the varying quantities of each construction product in the building cannot be taken into account when the credit score is calculated, the lowest ‘location or use’ category score per material category is used for the overall materials category score.’
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