This presentation on the growth of the sustainability agenda and the role of facilities management was presented by Neil Everitt at FM EXPO - The only dedicated communities management exhibition in the Middle East.
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The growth of the sustainability agenda and the role of facilities management
1. FM’s role in the
growing
sustainability
agenda
Neil Everitt
Business Development
2. 2 | Sustainability in Facilities Management
Introduction
• Sustainability and FM
• The BIFM Sustainability Survey
started in 2007 and is now in its
eighth year.
• Providing insight into how members
of the FM profession perceive the
implementation of sustainability
within their organisations.
• Eight year timeframe provides
opportunity to see trends,
understand where progress is
taking place, as well as to make
projections into the future of the
sector.
7. 7 | Sustainability in Facilities Management
The drivers
>For the wrong reasons?
>78% state corporate image
>77% point to increased legislation
8. 8 | Sustainability in Facilities Management
The drivers
>Regulatory standard
>Investment and shareholder
perspective
>A competitive element to
demonstrate effectiveness against
peers.
10. 10 | Sustainability in Facilities Management
Managing risk?
> Energy efficiency, water consumption and
waste generation.
> Can FMs play a crucial role in providing
evidence base for decision making?
Understanding regulation, financial impacts
and operational efficiencies?
> How far do we take that?
11. 11 | Sustainability in Facilities Management
Is it rattling down the chain?
> The majority of respondents manage their
suppliers’ carbon footprint, but 22.5% admit
there is no management at all.
14. 14 | Sustainability in Facilities Management
Conclusions
> FMs must change the way they talk about sustainability.
They should adopt a forward looking and risk based
approach in order to articulate potential impacts and
ramifications of decisions that are made.
> FMs must follow a standardised approach to data
collection and develop a solid evidence base that is
robust in terms of granularity and accuracy.
> Communication and engagement with suppliers, staff
and senior management is often poor, and must be
further developed and tailored.
FM and sustainability have a close relationship. Some of the biggest issues facing society such as energy management, waster disposal, building performance, all can be directly influenced and impacted by facilities management.
We’ve been working for over eight years on understanding how FM is approaching these challenges. Our sustainability survey investigates the trends and tries to make sense of what’s going on in the wider landscape.
Some of the slides today are taken from that report.
The first problem though is that too often sustainability is simply seen as being good to the environment. Of course that is a huge part of it but there is so much more.
By simply focusing on the green elements we’re missing a trick.
The Triple Bottom Line concept of people, profit and planet highlights what sustainable business is. You need to make sure you’re looking after all of these elements if you have any intention of being around for the long term you need to make sure you have the people to supply, make and sell your products, you need planet to sell them on and ultimately you need to deliver profits.
Encouragingly businesses are taking note.
We’ve seen organisations continue to value the sustainability agenda.
And that’s backed up by performance. Over the course of the last eight years we’re seeing an improvement in performance.
But our concern is that we’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Rather than adopting the triple bottom line concept we’re in fact we’re simply doing it for PR/marketing reasons or because legislation tells us we need to. This box ticking exercise threatens to reduce the value that can taken from a truly sustainable approach.
Here are some of the highest rated reasons. Interesting to see that investment and shareholder views are rated highly.
We’re also seeing leaders in businesses driving the agenda as well, more so than in previous years.
One way of demonstrating impact is to think about how we can reduce risk to the business rather than simply deploying these systems and tools. Connect the impact to broader, more strategic, business issues.
And that doesn’t stop with your organisation. More and more organisations want to make sure that their entire supply chain is meeting the same standards.
This is a project that we’re involved with in the UK. It’s been set up by some of the major FM suppliers to help educate and upskill those within their supply chain. A trend that we’re sure is set to continue. It also helps these guys report to their clients on the work they’re doing.
The interesting bit though. Whereas before we saw a lack of knowledge when we started this but as knowledge has increased we’re seeing a lack of tools and training rising up the agenda.
So we’re shortly releasing our next one. We’re starting to see some of the challenges crystallise and, crucially, some of the possible solutions.
We’re working with some organisations both on the client and supply side of the FM market. Keep an eye out for it’s launch at the end of June.