Specialists in PR and marketing support for building services, building management and sustainability
Getting smart with sustainability management
(written for
Facilities Management Journal)
While sustainability maintains a dominant position on many corporate
agendas, it falls to the people at the sharp end to deliver the
necessary information. Steve Dingley, managing director of Integrated
fm, considers the practical issues
Now that the corporate eyes of almost every organisation are firmly
focused on sustainability it’s a sure bet that FMs will be required to
deliver much of the required information Indeed, the FM Index KPI
Survey, published monthly in FMJ, has shown that FMs are already getting
heavily involved in this field.
Sustainability issues often form the dominant element of a Corporate
Social Responsibility (CSR) programme – often with a strong focus on
energy and related carbon emissions. Furthermore, initiatives such as
the Carbon Reduction Commitment (or CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme as it’s
now called) will reinforce this focus even further.
Given its high profile, then, it’s hardly surprising that there is now a
mass of information available about sustainability. Unfortunately, there
is nowhere near as much guidance on the practical aspects of managing
sustainability. Our experience of working with some major global
organisations shows that there are some fundamental considerations to
address before getting down to the nitty gritty of managing
sustainability. There are also some daunting practical considerations
which can only be addressed effectively using specialist tools, as
explained below.
We have found it very useful to start with that basic truth that: “you
can’t manage what you can’t measure”. So the first thing to be clear
about is what needs to be measured in order to address key
sustainability areas (see separate box).
The next stage is to identify what data needs to be captured in order to
arrive at the measurements. For example, measuring waste may require
regular auditing of each recycling stream (bottles, cans, paper etc) as
well as knowing how much waste is going to landfill. The same principle
applies to measuring consumables such as paper, toner, cleaning
chemicals etc.
To add to the complexity, this type of information rarely resides in one
place – that would make life far too easy! For instance, waste
information may be scattered across various buildings and waste
contractors; stationery usage may be with a supplier, the procurement
department or both and cleaning contractors may or may not keep records
of chemical consumption.
Assessing carbon footprint poses similar challenges. Measuring carbon
emissions from buildings may be relatively straightforward if automatic
meter reading (AMR) has been installed - and this will be required for
the CRC, Energy Performance Certificates and Display Energy
Certificates. However, carbon footprint assessment should also gather
data from many other areas, including road and air transport and
embedded carbon in procured goods. Again, this information will be
stored in many different places.
In parallel, the quality of the information held by different
organisations, or even different departments within the organisation,
will almost certainly vary and there are very few organisations that
have a data auditing process in place.
Pulling it all together
Assuming the measurement parameters have been identified, along with the
required data that must be collected, all of this information has to be
brought together from different departments and different suppliers. If
it were all in the same format that would be ideal so, of course, it
won’t be. Some of it will be in spreadsheets, some on paper, some in
specialist management programs – a real hotch potch of data.
The next practical consideration, then, is to get all of the relevant
information into a common format and while this is happening it needs to
be verified for accuracy and completeness. Failing to verify at this
stage may lead to working with inaccurate and meaningless information
that will make the whole exercise pointless. Ideally, this verification
will be to a recognised data assurance standard such as AA 1000AS.
Once the data has been assimilated and converted to a common format, it
can then be used to produce the necessary reports. However, doing this
manually is very time-consuming and often leads to working with
out-of-date information. And, of course, various stakeholders will
require their reports on different issues in different formats.
In addition, sustainability management – or contributing to it - in most
organisations is an add-on to the ‘day job’ so there’s relatively little
time to devote to it. The result, therefore, is that much sustainability
reporting is carried out in a rush as deadlines for the reports
approach.
Clearly, effective and meaningful management of sustainability requires
specialist tools that have been designed for the job. Indeed, our work
with many organisations, ranging from global consultancies to local
authorities, has shown that attempting to modify general Management
Information Systems or generic products such as spreadsheets, simply
won’t deliver the required functionality.
Such a system needs to satisfy certain criteria if it is to be a
worthwhile investment, so it’s worth bearing these in mind when sourcing
a solution for managing sustainability data.
Firstly, bearing in mind the diversity of data sources discussed above,
it will need to allow data to be input in different ways. Obvious
examples include importing from spreadsheets, direct manual input and
direct data feed from in-house or supply chain databases. As much of
this sustainability data also resides in FM systems, it can also be
useful to import from the help desk, asset management and resource
management software.
Because of the time factor, human intervention should be minimised with
as many automated functions as possible. Allocating pre-defined
tolerances to the data will ensure that discrepancies are identified and
referred back to a person for double checking.
Wherever possible, the data should be fed into the system as part of
other everyday activities, such as ordering stationery or measuring
waste levels, so the system is always up to date. Using an online system
makes it much quicker and easier to enter data from many different
locations.
In parallel, the data needs to have its quality maintained throughout
its life cycle, so that any changes or updating comply with the
established quality assurance procedures and any changes are recorded to
provide a step-by-step audit trail. Control is also important and
configurable user permissions enable each person to be assigned a
defined role with pre-defined permissions in line with their function
within the process. Proscribed, step-by-step routines will ensure that
nobody strays from the approved processes.
Once the validated data is in the system it needs to be easy to use for
a variety of purposes. As such, it should have a hierarchical structure
providing an overview of key areas with the ability to drill down for
more detailed reports. The ability to ‘slice and dice’ data in this way
can enable reports to be based on time periods, service types or by
department, building, country etc. Clearly, it is also useful to be able
to export reports in different formats (e.g. spreadsheet, PDF) to meet
stakeholder requirements.
Targeting features can also prove useful for entering and maintaining
targets for each service, such as waste recycling, utilities, travel
costs, paper consumption, etc. These will need to be configured to take
account of factors such as seasonal variances.
There can be no doubt that sustainability in all its forms is going to
become more important for organisations as time goes on. Even if you’re
managing now with manual methods things are likely to change, so now is
the time to look at alternatives and ‘get smart’ with sustainability
management.
Measuring up
Some of the key measurements required for managing sustainability:
- Energy consumption, system by system and plant item by plant item,
ideally on a floor by floor or zone by zone basis
- Water consumption
- Car/van/lorry journeys
- Efficiency of fleet vehicles
- Air travel
- Commuting patterns of staff
- Consumption of everyday consumables (e.g. paper, toner, cleaning
chemicals)
- Recycling levels, broken down by separate waste streams
- Percentage of waste consigned to landfill
- Carbon footprint/environmental performance of suppliers and their
products
- Ends -