Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) tools have been available for some years now and their function is predominantly to predict and identify the environmental impact of  building projects.  However EIA analysis is often done after the completion of the project or building and when it is too late to influence the design, materials or components to be used.  Also, more than 80% of the design decisions  that influence the whole life cycle of a building are made at the initial design phase. 
A new approach is suggested in this research to ensure that designers, clients and stakeholders have all of the relevant information needed at the outline design stage for the assessment of cost and environmental impact. The idea is that building owners and users will have the opportunity to minimise their operating costs from ‘cradle to grave’. As energy resources reduce over the next few decades, the value of this research will increase and it is possible to foresee government legislation which drives building construction in this direction.  By making environmental impact analysis readily linked to 3D products at the very early stage of the design process, the value of 3D technology will be enhanced significantly and it will likely result in more use of the technology in the construction process.  

In this context, the objective of this paper is to introduce and explore approaches  for developing integrated 3D- EIA, LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) and LCCA (Life Cycle Cost Analysis)  and VR (Virtual Reality)  tools and develop  trade-off analysis to assist in the decision making process.  To demonstrate initial results, a pilot case study in the UK is being developed. There are simulation tools (for examples nD modelling) developed by previous research  projects to evaluate the life cycle cost  integrated  3D visualisation.  However, this is not sufficient  for an environmental assessment tool that requires a wide coverage of input-output information for the project to drive though a hybrid appraisal. To achieve a holistic analysis; there is a need to bridge the gap between EIA, Life Cycle analysis (LCA) and virtual reality  technology. Therefore, LCA and LCCA will be used in this research along with the EIA. This will take into account the social-economic aspect to simulate the value of each proposed material and suggest a best option to be applied in a project. 

A product database is being created to be used to compare and analyse the different materials proposed for a design by considering its carbon emission, disposal, recycling and life cycle cost. The result will be used to support early design processes and evaluate the environmental impact and whole life cycle of a building. 
The paper discusses literature review in the subject area and the specification for the 3D-EIA. A case study of a school design is presented to demonstrate the tools.
The major issue for the tools is the lack of accuracy of the existing data particularly for the LCCA that could be overcome by sharing data with industry partners and research groups. 
