FM plays a pivotal role in the operation and maintenance of green buildings. Graeme Flaws, operations director – citizens services & defence, Serco, says: “As property custodians, preserving the recognised sustainability accreditation, be it is LEED or any other certification, is fundamental and core to the role of an FM provider.” He believes that the FM provider has a duty towards clients to ensure accreditations are maintained (as a minimum) by utilising effective FM strategies across respective buildings. In addition to preserving and maintaining the status quo, it is incumbent of the FM provider to keep up-to-date with the latest technology evolutions, IoT and advancing best practises to ultimately enhance the efficiency of the building and FM operation.
Jamal Abdulla Lootah, group CEO of Imdaad, adds: “Over the last few decades, the urbanisation boom has caused many industry experts, from across the construction, environmental development, and facilities management sectors amongst others, to propose practices and reforms that better serve the nation’s ambitious sustainability goals.
“Green buildings have often been proposed as not only an attractive but also a necessary alternative as the world enters an era of resource uncertainty. Put simply, green buildings prioritise full-spectrum resource efficiency, while also reducing building-related environmental health risks throughout their life cycles.”
Lootah says that green buildings require facilities management to monitor air quality, energy usage, water consumption, and waste efficiently. Each of these parameters is carefully regulated to guarantee the quality of life of each building’s occupants and the building’s overall longevity. From Imdaad’s experience, some of the most easily applicable and resource-friendly FM methods include the use of energy-efficient AC systems, water-saving plumbing fixtures, and motion-activated office and hallway light systems.
Imdaad’s hard FM offerings, including HVAC, infrastructure maintenance, and MEP, along with its soft FM offerings such as water tank cleaning and disinfection, pool water monitoring and cleaning, and environmentally-friendly disinfection services, all contribute to lower maintenance costs, healthier indoor environment quality, and enhanced durability in the long-run.
LEED the way
Talking about some of the maintenance programmes in place to implement green building requirements such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), Lootah says that regularly-scheduled maintenance, cleaning, and safety inspection services are vitally important to any building. He adds: “However, for buildings wishing to achieve the coveted LEED certification, we believe that extra care must be taken to build a close relationship between the building owners and their contracted FM organisations.”
The majority of integrated FM providers aim to not only provide their clients with up-to-date information on a building’s operation systems, but also produce valuable qualitative and quantitative data throughout long-term contracts that help identify recurring issues and trends.
He says that maintenance programmes that are more specific to green buildings may include routine water efficiency, indoor environmental quality (IEQ), materials and resources, and energy and atmospheric assessments. Modern real-time monitoring systems have made this process easier than ever before, allowing for necessary remote and manual system adjustments and maintenance to be made in record time. Flaws explains a bit about LEED. LEED refers to ASHRAE standards “which should be considered and understood”.
These standards typically pertain to, but is not limited to, air quality levels, ventilation levels, air filter selection and CO2 levels. The FM provider should consider developing a maintenance plan that contains the information necessary to operate the building efficiently. The plan should consider: A current sequence of operations for the building; the building occupancy schedule; equipment run-time schedules; set points for all HVAC equipment; set points for lighting levels throughout the building; minimum outside air requirements; any changes in schedules or set points for different seasons, days of the week, and times of day; a systems narrative describing the mechanical and electrical systems and equipment in the building; and a preventive maintenance plan for building equipment.
Flaws adds: “Energy consumption is one of the highest outgoings an asset owner will have on a building. Optimising and reducing, where possible, energy consumption within the building remains a focus area for LEED and other accreditors. It is therefore essential that this is a focus area for the FM provider and that best practises are embedded into maintenance programmes.”
What should be noted is that FM has both direct and indirect influence on the building environmental performance metrics. Flaws elaborates: “First and foremost, understanding the basis of design of the building is key to managing and operating the building(s) effectively and efficiently. Utilising building systems, such as BMS, to optimise set-points with the aim to reduce energy consumption, whilst ensuring the experience of the end user is not impacted. Measuring the baseline of the energy consumption and benchmarking this against other similar buildings in the region, will also help assess the performance of the building and the effect of maintenance programmes.” In addition, Flaws says that an essential element of continuous improvement is to measure and understand the satisfaction levels of the end user working, living or visiting the building. This can be assessed by conducting customer feedback surveys where an analysis can be undertaken to determine the level of performance of the building and/or FM. Feedback should be reviewed with an action plan developed to ensure the performance of the building and the end user experience have improved. Such surveys are also a pre-requisite of LEED.
Lootah adds: “FM providers can make a significant impact on a building’s environmental performance metrics, regardless of its age and existing operations systems. Aside from what has already been mentioned, a keen awareness of the unique environment a building exists in is vital.
“Efforts should be made to minimise a building’s impact on ecosystems and waterways, encouraging regionally appropriate landscaping that veers away from sprinkler system dependency, and minimising light and noise pollution; all these are important to the successful operation of any
green building.”
How are green building certifications moving with the times?
Green building certifications have been around for decades but as the corporate focus on sustainability grows, newer specialist schemes are making their debut and established ones are moving into new areas.
With many companies now actively seeking to reduce their carbon footprint and make buildings healthier for occupants, certifications from the well-known institutions are in high demand.
Green certifications have come a long from the 1990s when they were more like traditional risk assessments, focusing on issues such as land contamination, pollution and flood risk.
Nowadays, many older certification bodies have adapted in line with the decarbonisation challenges facing the real estate industry. The Canada Green Building Council’s Zero Carbon Building Standard was the first to launch a certification addressing both operational and embodied carbon in 2018 with LEED Zero Carbon, NABERS Climate Active Carbon and Design for Performance since following suit.
Others, like NABERS, involve annual assessments to measure the ongoing performance of buildings rather than the initial design. What’s more, newer schemes tend to be more single issue-focused such as on energy use intensity or air quality.
The value of green certifications
For many building owners, green certifications are an external validation of their commitment to the environmental credentials of their assets or the health and wellbeing of their tenants.
And with growing numbers of corporate tenants keen to show the buildings they occupy align not only with their net zero and wider sustainability goals, but also with the high expectations of their employees, certifications can justify a higher price tag.
Meta-analysis by Dalton and Fuerst of 42 studies between 2008 and 2016 showed that green building certifications yielded a rent premium of 6% and a sales premium of 7.6%. Other research found that spaces certified by WELL or Fitwel – both of which focus on health and wellbeing– could attract effective rents that were 4.4% to 7% more per square foot than nearby, non-certified and non-registered peers.
“From a value perspective,
there’s no doubt that buildings that have a range of market-leading certifications will perform better than buildings that don’t,” says Kirsty Draper, Head of Sustainability at JLL’s UK Agency, although she acknowledges this differential varies between markets.
Depending on location, green certifications can also enable developers and owners to potentially streamline the compliance process, open up tax incentives and funding opportunities, and improve occupancy rates.
A fast-evolving field The sheer number of green certifications and the different areas they cover, however, is causing issues. Many companies struggle to understand what the different certifications mean, says Draper.
“People in the market may equate a good BREEAM rating or an energy performance certificate [EPC] rating, with a good building performance metric. But BREEAM New Construction or RFO don’t look at operational performance, nor does an EPC, which is why we’re seeing a move towards schemes such as NABERS which do,” she says. In the era of environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets, there’s also a danger of focusing just on ‘E’ and overlooking ‘S’ or ‘G’.
As such, it can be challenging for developers and occupiers to identify which combination of standards, certifications and rating programmes are most applicable to a particular project.
“When choosing certifications, it’s not about the number, it’s about the relevancy,” says Draper. “Developers and investors need to consider the asset class and the local market and ask whether it will make the building more appealing to an occupier or buyer. They should align certifications to complement each other while avoiding duplication.” And while getting certified can still deliver financial benefits, the process itself can be extremely costly. Certification procedures are often inflexible, which can be particularly challenging when working across different geographies.
The future of green certification
As performance-focused schemes become more popular, ongoing access to good data is vital. “Buildings equipped with real-time sensor technologies measuring everything from temperature to employee engagement will be better placed to report their true impact on the environment and people,” says Staunton.
Chinese-developed RESET, for example, began by using sensors to monitor indoor air quality, but now uses them to measure factors such as energy, materials and water to demonstrate overall performance.
This focus on ongoing assessment will define future schemes as pressure to improve real estate transparency through accurate reporting grows, predicts Staunton. “If certifications are to continue to signal best-in-class buildings, they need to be able to quantify their green, health and productivity impacts on demand.”
While he believes consolidation among different certification schemes is unlikely, there will be new schemes that look at other areas such as the human side and the governance of sustainability. More niche issues such as accessibility and inclusive design will also come to the fore.
Incoming legislation will equally drive changes and make sustainable real estate more commonplace. “However, there’s always going to be a want for some sort of certification for owners and developers to differentiate their assets,” Staunton concludes.