QUESTIONNAIRE USER GUIDE

Anne Landfield Greig 

Four Elements Consulting, LLC 

Joshua D. Kneifel

U.S. Department of Commerce

National Institute of Standards and Technology

January 2020
BEES Questionnaire User Guide Page 2

Table of Contents

Foreword..........................................................................................................................................3

Basic Life Cycle Assessment and Inventory Concepts....................................................................4

BEES System Boundaries: Your Data in the Life Cycle .............................................................4

Allocation Rules ..........................................................................................................................5

Completing the Questionnaire .........................................................................................................6

I Product Data Spreadsheet..........................................................................................................6

Bill of Materials (BOM) ..........................................................................................................6

Packaging.................................................................................................................................6

Product Lifetime, Transport, and Other data ...........................................................................6

II Facility Data Spreadsheet.........................................................................................................7

Completing the Facility Spreadsheet .......................................................................................7

III Installation & Maintenance Spreadsheet...............................................................................10

IV Utilities Data Spreadsheet.....................................................................................................10

When to use the Utility Sheet?...............................................................................................11

Directions...............................................................................................................................11

V Reporting Details and Rules ..................................................................................................11

1. Reporting Rules for Materials...........................................................................................11

2. Exclusion of general site operations and capital equipment .............................................12

3. Avoiding double-counting ................................................................................................12

VI Possible Sources of Facility Information..............................................................................13

OMB NO: 0693-0036 Expires 03/31/2020. The BEES Please information collection is authorized 

by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Your response is voluntary. Public reporting for 

this collection of information is estimated to average 63 minutes per response, including the time 

of reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering the data needed, and 

completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this estimate or 

any other aspects of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing the length of 

this questionnaire, to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 

3220, Gaithersburg, MD 20899-3220 and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Office of 

Information and Regulatory Affairs, Washington, D.C. 20503.
BEES Questionnaire User Guide Page 3

Foreword

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Engineering Laboratory's Applied Economics 

Office gathers data to develop environmental profiles for building products for its online tool, Building for 

Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES). BEES implements a powerful technique for selecting 

cost-effective, environmentally-preferable building products. The most recent version, BEES Online, a web 

application aimed at designers, builders, and product manufacturers, includes environmental and economic 

performance data for over 230 building products. BEES can be accessed at: 

http://www.nist.gov/el/economics/BEESSoftware.cfm

The goal for BEES is two-fold: 

1. Help manufacturers innovate and develop cost-effective green building products, and 

2. Allow a broad range of stakeholders, including architects, designers, government agencies, LCA 

practitioners, green certification organizations, and consumers analyze and select these products 

based on attributes that matter most. 

The data gathered from this questionnaire will be used to generate environmental and cost Life Cycle 

Assessment (LCA) results and will be incorporated into BEES. We work closely with manufacturers 

throughout the data collection and aggregation process to ensure that the product(s) being entered into 

BEES are representative of the product(s). Results will be available for the manufacturer’s review and 

approval before publication. 

Please return your completed questionnaire to Anne Landfield Greig at Anne@FourElementsLLC.com. 

For assistance in completing the questionnaire, contact Anne at Anne@FourElementsLLC.com (ph: 206-

935-4600) or Joshua Kneifel at Joshua.Kneifel@NIST.gov (ph: 301-975-6857). 
BEES Questionnaire User Guide Page 4

Basic Life Cycle Assessment and Inventory Concepts

BEES quantifies environmental performance using the multi-disciplinary approach known as Life Cycle 

Assessment (LCA). LCA is a “cradle-to-grave” systems approach for measuring environmental 

performance that is standardized by the International Standards Organization (ISO).1 The approach is based 

on the belief that all stages in the life of a product generate environmental impacts and must therefore be 

analyzed, including raw materials acquisition, product manufacture, transportation, installation, operation 

and maintenance, and ultimately recycling and waste management. An analysis that excludes any of these 

stages is limited because it potentially ignores the full range of upstream and downstream impacts of stagespecific processes.

The strength of environmental LCA is its comprehensive, multi-dimensional scope. Many green building 

claims and strategies are based on a single life-cycle stage, environmental impact, or attribute. A product is 

claimed to be green simply because it has recycled content, or claimed not to be green because it emits 

volatile organic compounds (VOCs) during its installation and use. These single-attribute claims may be 

misleading because they ignore the possibility that other life-cycle stages, or other environmental impacts, 

may yield offsetting impacts. For example, the recycled content product may have a high embodied energy 

content, leading to resource depletion, global warming, and acid rain impacts during the raw materials 

acquisition, manufacturing, and transportation life-cycle stages. LCA thus broadens the environmental 

discussion by accounting for shifts of environmental problems from one life-cycle stage to another, or one 

environmental medium (land, air, water) to another. The benefit of the LCA approach is in implementing 

a trade-off analysis to achieve a genuine reduction in overall environmental impact, rather than a simple 

shift of impact.

The LCA methodology involves four steps.2

1. The goal and scope definition step spells out the purpose of the study and its breadth and depth. 

2. The inventory analysis step identifies and quantifies the environmental inputs and outputs 

associated with a product over its entire life-cycle. Environmental inputs include water, energy, 

and other resources; outputs include releases to air, land, and water. However, it is not these inputs 

and outputs, or inventory flows, that are of direct interest. We are most interested in their 

consequences, or impacts on the environment. Thus, the next LCA step, 

3. Impact assessment characterizes these inventory flows in relation to a set of environmental impact 

categories. For example, the impact assessment step might relate carbon dioxide emissions, a flow, 

to global warming, an impact. 

4. The interpretation step combines the environmental impacts in accordance with the goals of the 

LCA study.

We need your help with the second LCA step, inventory analysis. During this step, a life cycle inventory 

(LCI) is compiled which records material and energy flows into and out of a product system. Based on your 

completed questionnaire, NIST will compile the LCI and LCIA for your product for review by your firm. 

Once the product results are uploaded into BEES, BEES will facilitate the LCA interpretation step by 

permitting the user to synthesize impact scores into an aggregate environmental performance score for your 

product.

BEES System Boundaries: Your Data in the Life Cycle

LCA evaluates environmental impacts across all stages in the life of a product: raw materials acquisition, 

product manufacture, transportation, use, and end of life. Since you are not likely to have detailed 

environmental performance data for the extraction and production of the raw materials you consume, we 

1 ISO 14040:2006, the International Standard of the International Standardization Organization, Environmental management. Life 

cycle assessment. Principles and framework, and ISO 14044:2006, Environmental management – Life cycle assessment –

Requirements and guidelines.

2 ISO 14040:2006.
BEES Questionnaire User Guide Page 5

are not asking for these data. Rather, much of this questionnaire focuses on the product composition and 

the manufacturing step you control, from raw materials entering your plant to the finished products ready 

to be shipped from your plant. Figure 1 displays the processes at your facility of interest. Note that the blue 

box (“black box”) should encompass all the production processes contributing to the production of your 

product.

Figure 1 Facility System Boundaries

The questionnaire also contains questions on the use phase of your product, including product installation 

and maintenance, as well as questions on its disposition at the end of its useful life (including recyclability). 

For the questions you cannot answer, we work together to come up with reasonable estimates or 

assumptions based on similar products. 

The results that are compiled for your product will include all life-cycle stages, with raw material 

acquisition data collected from standard databases, and any missing use and end-of-life stage data based on 

published sources and industry interviews.

Allocation Rules

We are asking for data related to the environmental inputs and outputs of your product’s manufacturing 

process. Often, a manufacturing plant produces two or more products at the same time (co-products). When 

this is the case, the inputs and outputs for the plant need to be split, or allocated, to indicate the flows 

specific to the building product for BEES. This allocation will be done by NIST once your completed 

questionnaire is received. Therefore, report information for the entire production process, including the 

BEES product and any other products produced by the same process. 

Your manufacturing process may use some on-site utilities that are shared by the entire plant and, therefore, 

by other products that the plant may produce. Examples of on-site utilities include:

• An on-site power plant generating steam, electricity, compressed air, or hot water which is 

consumed by the whole plant,

• A wastewater treatment plant which treats effluents coming from different parts of the plant.

In an LCA study, since on-site utilities usually serve several processes, their input and output quantities are 

allocated among processes. You may need to make this allocation. The Utilities section below will address 

data for this part of the questionnaire. 
BEES Questionnaire User Guide Page 6

Completing the Questionnaire

The Excel-based BEES questionnaire consists of four parts plus the Introduction:

1. Product Data

2. Facility Data

3. Installation & Maintenance

4. Utilities Data

The Introduction sheet gives basic information on your company, contact person, and identifies the product 

to be included in BEES. Once NIST receives your completed questionnaire, our expert consultants will 

review your data for completeness, accuracy, and consistency, and may have questions for your contact 

person.

Detailed instructions for completing the four sections follow. Part 4, Utilities, may not be relevant to your 

process or product. 

I Product Data Spreadsheet

Bill of Materials (BOM)

The BOM will provide us with the materials that make up the BEES product. Aim to provide 99 % or 

greater by mass of your product. Approaching 100 % of inputs is ideal for completeness.

Figure 2 Product Data Questionnaire Structure : BOM Section

Below a couple questions on product characteristics (a, b, and c in the figure), Column B (d) provides the 

space to list the materials that make up the product. Provide the quantity of materials in mass units in 

Column D, per the square area you choose in (a). Specify unit of mass in Column C. Columns E and F tell 

us how and how far materials were transported to your plant. Provide the distance the material is transported 

and the mode of transportation (truck, rail, barge, etc.). Specify units (e.g., kilometer or mile).

Only white fields should be filled in. Additional columns or rows can be added when space is needed.

Packaging

Describe how the product is packaged. For example, “flooring sheets of 5' x 20', rolled onto a recycled 

cardboard core and wrapped in plastic film. 8 rolls are transported on a wooden pallet”. Next, provide the 

quantity of each material per amount described (i.e., 5 lb cardboard per roll).

Product Lifetime, Transport, and Other data

These questions cover additional quantitative and qualitative attributes of the product, and include:

• The useful life of the product in years, months, etc.; 

B C D E F

I Bill of Materials (BOM)

Units Quantity

Distance 

(miles) Mode

a Product mass per square area (ft2, m2...)

b Product density

c BEES product thickness (if applicable)

d List materials in the product. Feel free to delineate by functional 

layers of the product.

Transport of Materials to 

the Site
BEES Questionnaire User Guide Page 7

• The mass of the product;

• The recyclability of the product at the end of its useful life;

• Transportation of the finished product to the building site or customer; 

• Manufacturer’s suggested retail price, which is used for economic performance calculations. 

II Facility Data Spreadsheet

Completing the Facility Spreadsheet

The figure below displays the structure of the Facility Data in the questionnaire. The columns for data input 

will be described in turn.
BEES Questionnaire User Guide Page 8

Figure 3 Facility Data Questionnaire Structure

COLUMN --> B C D E F G H I

Units Quantity

S

o

u

r

c

e

T

y

p

e

Y

e

a

r

Distance 

(miles) Mode

.

Products Building Product for BEES:

Other products produced at the facility 

.

Ancillary Water use for cooling or steam prioduction

Materials & Fresh water used for processing

Water Reclaimed water used for processing

Other water (specify: ________________)

Other materials used for processing

Lubricants

Others:

Purchased Energy: Electricity

Steam

Compressed Air

Others (please specify)

Purchased Fuels: Coal

Coke

Natural Gas

Others (please specify)

Solid Waste: Solid waste categories How is this managed?

Non-hazardous solid waste 

Hazardous solid waste 

Other waste categories (specify): 

Recovered Matter: Recovered Matter (please specify): Fate of rec'd material

What percent of the product (trimmings, etc.) is 

generated at manufacturing and is recovered? %

Air Emissions:

Reported emissions (to TRI or other agency that 

requires you to report)

Flue gas (volume)

List the emissions: 

add more rows as necessary

Water Effluents: Water effluent data if available

Wastewater total (volume)

BOD

COD

Others:

Products

Inflows

Outflows

Data Quality

Transport of Materials 

to the Site
BEES Questionnaire User Guide Page 9

COLUMN B: Inputs and Outputs 

Products and Coproducts

List the product (and coproducts) at your facility and their quantity produced. You may report them in 

the unit you prefer (e.g., yard, square foot, pound, kilogram, etc.). The rest of the data on the Facility 

Data sheet must be reported in terms of the total production quantity reported here.

Inflows – Ancillary Materials, Water, and Energy

Ancillary materials. Provide the quantities of materials consumed during processing, that are not a part of 

the final product. Provide the data in mass units, per your quantified output.

Water. Report only make-up process (or cooling water) that has been lost in the system; be careful not to 

include water that is being recycled somewhere in the facility. In the “Notes” column (not shown in the 

figure), provide the source of the water if known.

Energy. Provide the quantities of purchased energy and purchased fuels consumed during processing or 

manufacturing. If you have a special type of energy (i.e., all hydropower) or are buying electricity from a 

special grid, please note this. Also, if your energy source (i.e., natural gas boiler) is especially efficient (or 

inefficient), state so and provide us with more details. For energy flows, please indicate if the quantity 

represents Net Caloric Value (NCV) or Gross Caloric Value (GCV).3

Outflows

Waste not recovered. Report information on the non-hazardous and hazardous solid waste produced and 

describe its fate (i.e., landfill; hazardous waste incineration; etc.). Provide waste on a dry mass basis. 

Recovered material. Recovered material includes any material reused/recycled in the same process (i.e. 

recycled as a closed loop) or in a process not related to your product. In any event, provide what the fate 

is for each recovered material. We will model the closed loops accordingly. For recovered energy, provide 

any information regarding whether processes produce energy that goes to other processes. This information 

will be used to give the process “credit” for that energy used elsewhere.

Air Emissions. Provide emissions reported to the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) or other required 

reporting entities. These may include pollutants that a baghouse or other air pollutant scrubbing technology 

might not have captured, other particulates, VOC’s, metals in air, etc. Do not worry too much about fuel 

combustion-related air emissions (e.g., CO2...), as these are included within our own data sets on fuel 

combustion to assure consistency in fuel-related emissions across all BEES products. 

Water Effluents. Provide the total wastewater quantity generated by the process (on a volume basis). For 

the effluents, if you have an on-site wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) that treats effluents from different 

parts of your facility, then report the effluents in the utility section under WWTP. If you do not have an 

on-site WWTP, state so and provide the effluents as they leave your facility, and state what their fate is 

(direct to water body or to an off-site WWTP). If it is an off-site WWTP, we will use our WWTP reduction 

factors for the modeling.

COLUMN C: Units

The “Units” column requests the units corresponding to the quantity reported in column D. 

It is important that units be used that permit conversion to inflow and outflow quantities. For example, if 

consumption of a material is reported in pounds per year, then yearly production of the product should also 

3 NCV or Low Heat Value is the energy recoverable by the combustion of a unit quantity of fuel when the combustion product (the

exhaust) is not brought back to the ambient temperature and pressure. GCV or High Heat Value is the total quantity of energy 

released by the combustion of a unit quantity of fuel, as measured by a bomb calorimeter. The difference between GCV and NCV 

is the vaporization latent heat of the water contained in the exhaust and the exhaust sensible heat.
BEES Questionnaire User Guide Page 10

be reported. If pollutants are reported as concentration (e.g., SOx in ppmv), then the corresponding volume 

should also be indicated (a row for volume of flue gas and wastewater is included in the questionnaire). 

COLUMN D: Quantity

Quantity needs to be filled in with values corresponding to the production quantity of all the products 

reported (starting at Row 8 in the spreadsheet). 

COLUMNS E, F, G: Data Quality

Data quality measures include data source, type, and year.

Data Source. Data source refers to where the data originated. In each cell, use the following letters to 

represent the appropriate category:

F At the plant

L From literature

O Other (specify in the questionnaire)

Data Type. Data type refers to how you obtained the data point. In each cell, use one of the following 

letters to represent the appropriate category:

M Measured (e.g., electricity meter)

C Calculated (emissions factors, mass balance, ...)

E Estimated (estimation has been established based on approximations, e.g. 

transportation distance)

S Shared or apportioned (data for 2 processes are estimated)

O Other (specify in the questionnaire)

Year. Provide the year the reported data point represents. Usually, it is best to provide data for the most 

recent fiscal year for which it is possible to get 12 months of the most complete/most accurate information. 

Overall, it is best to report data all from 1 year, but if you have to use data from different years, report the 

information and specify the year(s).

COLUMNS H and I: Transport of Materials to Site

Columns H and I are for information on transportation of the raw material to the site. The distance the 

material is transported and the mode of transportation (truck, rail, barge, etc.) are requested for each material 

transported to the site. Specify units (e.g., kilometer or mile).

III Installation & Maintenance Spreadsheet

The Installation section begins with a general question about how your product is installed. The next part 

includes providing the quantity of manufacturer-recommended installation materials (e.g., bonding agent 

for floor tiles, nails for roofing materials) and energy needed to install a given area or quantity of product.

The Maintenance section requests for information on product maintenance schedule and requirements 

(e.g., floor wax for quarterly waxing of floor coverings). Names of recommended or generic cleaning / 

finishing products, or their general composition are helpful.

IV Utilities Data Spreadsheet

On-site utilities at your plant could include:
BEES Questionnaire User Guide Page 11

• Electric or co-generation plant

• Wastewater treatment plant

• Air scrubbing equipment

When to use the Utility Sheet? 

 If a utility is dedicated to only the product for which you are collecting data, then you may include 

those inputs and outputs in the Facility Data sheet (see Figure 1). 

 If the utility provides services for parts of the plant other than where the BEES product is 

manufactured, then allocating the inputs and outputs to the product should be done, and this 

spreadsheet should be completed. 

Directions

On the Utilities spreadsheet, provide all inputs and outputs for the utility plant for the reporting year. Inputs, 

outputs, and organization of the worksheet are similar to the Facility Data worksheet.

Please give the % the utility is applied to the BEES product you are reporting on, shown below: 

Figure 4 Example of a Utility and its Allocation 

Use the above approach for all of your utilities pertaining to the product for which you are collecting data. 

V Reporting Details and Rules

1. Reporting Rules for Materials 

Inflows

While it is impossible to try to record all the inflows to the production process, we still want to capture as 

many inputs as possible. Decision rules have been established, as follows, to restrict data collection to the 

set of inputs that will capture information we might overlook, while ensuring we meet our cut-off goal.

1. Report all energy inputs, including electricity, steam, and compressed air;

2. Record 99 percent (by weight) or more of total production process inputs. Those inputs that make 

up less than 0.1% may be excluded;

In the Utility section: % allocated to Product 1: 80%

% allocated to Product 2: 20%

Product 1

Product 2

2000 liters wastewater

WWTP

8000 liters wastewater
BEES Questionnaire User Guide Page 12

3. Record inputs that are small yet have an environmental burden. Typical criteria for the 

importance of an environmental burden is the purchase cost is high, since this may indicate scarce 

resources or high energy consumption or obscure/expensive chemicals; and

4. Report inputs, even if small, if the data are available.

Other Rules for Materials 

For recycled materials, specify the percentage of recycled content.

If possible, provide the chemical composition for inputs in addition to their commercial names. You may 

also provide their function. When chemical composition is not available, enter the consumable under its 

function name followed by the term “unspecified” (e.g. “coagulating agent: unspecified”, “anti-corroding 

agent: unspecified”). 

If an input is supplied as diluted with water or in an amorphous material, report it in pure terms, that is, 

100% of weight. Or if you prefer, provide the full amount, but include the dilution percentage.

Outflows: Solid Waste and Co-products

Solid waste or co-products for which the accumulated tonnage represents less than 1% (by weight) of the 

total waste or co-product tonnage for the production process need not be recorded. 

2. Exclusion of general site operations and capital equipment

Flows not directly related to industrial activities are not taken into account, e.g., cafeteria, building heat, 

and restroom operations. If these are included because you could not separate this from, e.g., total 

electricity, state so in the questionnaire. 

Capital equipment associated with the site facility should also be excluded, with the exception of capital 

equipment consumables (example: in the mining industry, truck tires may be replaced numerous times over 

the course of a year; for this reason, these are considered consumables). 

3. Avoiding double-counting 

Internal flows for a building product production process should not be reported in the questionnaire. This 

principle applies to both inflows (materials and energy) and outflows. For example, as indicated by its 

depiction in red in 

Figure 5 presents the amount of steam energy entering the production process should not be reported 

because it is an internal flow subject to double counting. If the steam is produced in a boiler, its use is 
BEES Questionnaire User Guide Page 13

already accounted for through the allocated boiler inputs (e.g., natural gas or heavy fuel oil) and emissions 

which are recorded in the questionnaire.

Figure 5 Internal Flows – Avoid Double-Counting

VI Possible Sources of Facility Information 

The following table identifies the business units most likely to have the information necessary to provide 

the data requested in this questionnaire. 

Flow Category Business Unit

Raw materials and energy

On-site utilities (power plants, etc.)

-- Purchasing Department, Production Department

-- Energy Department for power plant 

-- Environmental Department for wastewater treatment plant

Air emissions Environmental Department

Water effluents Environmental Department

Solid Waste Environmental Department