Environmental aspects are becoming key features in the design when it comes to constructing modern, sustainable residential buildings. In an effort to rationalize procedures and practices, the project Longlife has conducted a comparative review of these issues among the countries Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, Poland and Russia (associated organizations) in the Baltic Sea Region. The countries involved have shared knowledge and experiences with each other about how their respective building processes operate, which are collated and analysed. There are differences and similarities in the state of technology, administrative and legal procedures, financial situation and demographic needs. Regarding environmentally friendly residential construction, one of the objectives of Longlife was to minimize these differences across the Baltic Sea Region. This initial comparative stage covers planning, building permit and tendering procedures, practices for developing and operating housing and construction technologies. Longlife project partners work in three competence teams to use the special knowledge and experiences of the cooperation in a public private partnership. Longlife project analyses the engineering and technology standards in the participating countries; shows the comparison and investigations of administration procedures, laws, tendering rules; provides a general, specific overview about economical issues, sustainability and quality aspects. This paper reflects the currently most applicable features of the participating countries' processes and is basis for the next work package: development of standards, criteria and specifications for a sustainable residential building.