By Ian Jeffries and Tim Horsey

Everyone wants to be green, but without a systematic way of measuring the environmental impact of buildings, property professionals around the world will remain in the dark. IPD intends to fill this gap with its new Environment Code, to be launched end of February 2008.

The global environmental challenge

With more and more scientific evidence showing the global effects of climate change, waste generation and resource exhaustion, environmental issues have been catapulted to the top of the global political agenda.  Governments and societies around the world are uniting on the need to tackle these challenges and reduce the negative environmental effects associated with our resource hungry lifestyles. As a result, a wide range of regulatory and tax measures are emerging to help reduce environmental damage – bolstered by many voluntary initiatives.
 
Not surprisingly, this worldwide focus has pushed environmental issues up the corporate agenda and into the boardroom. And as society’s expectations increase, so organisations are likely to find themselves under pressure to be more accountable for their environmental and social conduct. Corporate real estate executives will find themselves at the frontline of the environmental agenda, with a real opportunity to lead the way. Not least because corporate buildings are responsible for some 20 per cent of global CO2 emissions, mainly through energy use. They are also a major source of waste generation and a huge consumer of water resources.

Into the boardroom

So corporate boards will be asking their property and facilities executives to supply more detailed and higher quality environmental information, to prove their environmental performance. Shareholders, customers and employees will all want to know the hard facts.

This represents a major challenge, and opportunity, for property executives. But environmental issues are still new to most and organisations are just finding their way. A widely accepted, good practice ‘way of doing things’ is now highly desirable for corporate real estate - especially if it can help support the information disclosure requirements that stakeholders are coming to expect. The IPD Environment Code will help provide this support.

Getting the measure of sustainability

Given the information and reporting challenges linked to the environmental agenda, IPD has developed the Environment Code to help corporate property professionals deliver high quality performance information to their organisations and stakeholders. The Code is a good practice template for collecting, measuring and analysing environmental information. Using common terminologies, it can be applied to buildings anywhere in the world.

The Code sets out a clear approach for collecting environmental data, and will allow property executives to show consistent and comparable performance information about their buildings. By doing so, it will support management decision making and communication. With a trustworthy and reliable information base, managers can make better, faster, and more confident decisions about how to boost the performance and reduce the environmental impact of their buildings. As well as letting the corporate property industry ‘speak the same language’, the Code provides a ready-made structure for communicating performance to senior management, staff, shareholders, customers and communities.

Green is good for you

By using the Code – and generating high-quality environmental information – corporate property professionals will be better equipped to support their organisation’s environmental objectives and to enhance corporate reputation. Not only by helping the organisation to meet its increasing environmental obligations, but also by complying with a recognised ‘industry standard’ for environmental performance measurement.

The Code should also mean improvements in risk management, since with a clearer picture of the environmental risks associated with their buildings, managers will be able to take effective action to reduce their exposure to these factors. And with a clear level of environmental performance in mind, managers will be able to set better environmental specifications for procurement associated with new buildings, or improving existing ones.

As well as enabling organisations to compare the environmental performance of buildings within a corporate estate, the Code will enable users to benchmark their performance against other organisations.

What’s in the Code?

The Environment Code is applicable to a wide range of commercial building types and uses, particularly retail and office property. The data items and definitions that make up the Code are split into Core and Secondary Measures. Core Measures deal with energy, water and waste - the most significant environmental challenges for building managers at present. As such, they form the initial focus for data collection and reporting. The Secondary Measures are generally more qualitative, and look at issues like transport provision, pollution, health and well-being, and adaptation to climate change. These are brought together in an Environmental Health-Check Survey.

When is it coming out?

The Environment Code will be launched on Tuesday 26th February at London’s City Hall.  For more information about the event, please email Becci Elson at IPD: becci.elson@ipd.com. 

 The Code will be free to download from the IPD website (www.ipdoccupiers.com) after 26th February.