Since 1 July 2026 the environmental performance limit on offices is 15 percent tighter, and five building types that never had a limit now have one. If you file permit applications or assemble the dossier that goes with them, this is the kind of change that is easy to miss until an application bounces.
Every new building in the Netherlands gets a milieuprestatie score, MPG for short: a single number for the environmental footprint of the materials in it, concrete, insulation, steel, timber, the lot, calculated over the building's life cycle and checked against a legal ceiling before a permit is granted. Housing and offices have carried this duty since 2013. On 1 July 2026 the ceiling moved, and the list of building types it applies to got longer.
Offices just got 15 percent stricter
The amendment decision, published as Staatsblad 2025, 432 and signed by the Minister for Housing and Spatial Planning, tightens the MPG ceiling for the office function to 1.55. That is a 15 percent cut from the previous limit. A building that would have scraped by on materials choices two years ago may no longer clear the bar, which matters most for a project still at the design stage, where a facade or structural system can still be swapped for something with a lower footprint.
Five more building types get a ceiling for the first time
Until now, only housing and offices had an MPG duty. The same amendment introduces one for assembly, education, sport and retail functions, typically around 1.85. A school, a gym or a shop that never had to think about a milieuprestatie score now does. Informatiepunt Leefomgeving has the full breakdown by gebruiksfunctie. There is also relief built in: small residential buildings and offices that are not compact, where the ratio of outer surface to usable floor area runs high, get a softer ceiling, because that shape structurally costs more materials per square metre for reasons that have nothing to do with how well the building was designed.
The calculation itself runs through the Bepalingsmethode Milieuprestatie Bouwwerken, using product data from the Nationale Milieudatabase, and the result gets filed with the omgevingsvergunning application. It is a separate discipline from a Wkb dossier, usually handled by a specialist MPG calculator, but it lands on the same desk: the one assembling everything a building needs before work can start.
The EU is asking the same question, one product at a time
The Netherlands has scored whole buildings on their material footprint for over a decade. The EU is now doing something related at the product level. Under the revised Construction Products Regulation, manufacturers of priority products, cement, steel and insulation among them, have had to declare Global Warming Potential as part of their Declaration of Performance since 8 January 2026. Different mechanism, same direction: the environmental cost of what goes into a building is becoming a number you have to produce, not an afterthought.
What this does not touch
BimDossier's compliance engine checks Bbl rule packs against your IFC model today: fire safety, structural requirements, usability and thermal insulation. It does not calculate an MPG score. That calculation runs on product-level environmental data through the Nationale Milieudatabase, a different discipline with its own specialist tools. What we do is give the result somewhere to live once it exists.
Where we come in
An MPG calculation is one more document that has to be present and correct before a bevoegd gezag will sign off, alongside the certificates, the verklaring kwaliteitsborger and everything else in the dossier. BimDossier's dossier checklist tracks what is collected and what is still missing, on your model, from bouwmelding to gereedmelding, so a milieuprestatie report does not end up as a loose PDF nobody can find at gereedmelding.