Sustainable Facility Management is the Next Big Thing in Creating a Greener Tomorrow

Sustainability has become a far-reaching issue now that facilities management professionals just cannot overlook. For the skeptics, there is little argument that today we can design buildings and workplaces that are energy efficient and has minimum impact on the environment. The design community deserves major credit in changing the entire landscape for building construction and getting us introduced to environment friendly facilities. Now when the need to create and design sustainable buildings around us has been recognized, we need to turn our attention to the existing facilities. There are more than five million commercial buildings in the United States where the potential for introducing a green building stock is tremendous.

What is taking so long? The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System for Existing Buildings (LEED EB) is yet to certify a large number of existing buildings. There are less than 100 LEED EB certified facilities in the US. Therefore, there are obstacles in achieving extensive market transformation. However through diligent training, most of the owners have now become convinced of the advantages of sustainable design practices in the new facilities.

The Scenario is Different for FMS

Facility managers are faced with a different kind of problem. As sustainable practices cost minimally more compared to the existing practices, capital budgets and shrinking operations make it difficult to implement sustainability. Most often, certification standards are not met and capital replacement cycles go out of sync with the integration of green projects. The latest EB certification makes it mandatory for facility owners to have a number of sustainable facility systems at their sites and these include: water, energy, indoor air quality, recycle practices and the like. For facilities that are relatively old, the mandate is to replace some major building systems like chiller, windows, roofs, etc. All these need to meet the standards set in the certification. Though there is proven evidence of the financial benefits of sustainable facilities, some building owners are not adequately educated on the benefits. Therefore, a large gap exists still today in realizing what you should do compared to being ignorant towards LLED certifications. Also a gap remains between the operation and design of sustainable facilities. We still do not seriously consider the concept of designing for the environment, even after facility managers across the globe have realized the importance of having sustainable facilities.

Overcoming the Gaps in Establishing Sustainable Facilities

So how can one overcome the gaps in the existing buildings? It is often argued that facility designers are the ones who have the highest influence as far as operational efficiency and environmental impacts of buildings are concerned. If a building is designed properly, it should be able to provide several years of healthy and clean work environment. This holds a lot of promise for all the high-performance buildings that are coming up in the recent times. Now, all that is required is to keep them running efficiently and this is where a facility manager comes into play. As facility managers are responsible for controlling the operating costs of buildings, they have a significant influence on the productivity of the workforce. Workforce costs are considered the greatest expense to an organization by far and by controlling the operating costs of a facility, facility managers can easily contribute to the costs of facility improvements. With facility professionals managing about 60 percent of an organization’s assets, they can influence the productivity of the workforce by improving the health and safety of the workplace.

Now what does a facility manager do with a 50 year old property that was not designed with green trends and sustainability in mind? Owners are not usually willing to scrap existing buildings or bear big holes in their pockets for the sake of the environment. As capital improvement budgets are always tight, revamping large number of buildings might get hard to be justified. The solution to this problem is to make plans for improvements of existing buildings one step at a time. Education of facility managers on the importance of sustainability is also very important here.

In order to being able to bring about the market transformation, in the existing buildings, facility managers are required to be provided with facilities management solutions and tools so that they can create sustainable management programs that can custom fit into any organization. It is true that every building owner does not have the same level of commitment towards protecting the environment and does not have the same level of financial resource. If there is a toolkit of sustainable practice in existing buildings, facility managers will have the freedom to choose the techniques that have the most impact on their organization considering the economic, political and environmental climate.

Crafting a Sustainable Policy

A sustainable policy that is crafted carefully will align itself to the mission of an organization providing the greatest impact on the environment. This impact can have a great deal of influence on the entire facility management system and on the pace of transformation in existing buildings towards becoming more energy efficient and environment friendly. The facility manager here is the driving force behind aligning the facility operations with maintenance strategy.

Implementing tools for improving the day to day operations of water usage and energy consumption and waste management are extremely crucial. Small steps today can lead to bigger gains the coming days. The focus should be on the day to day operations of facilities aligned with the mission of every organization. For some it might be building certifications under LEED programs while for others it might mean making small changes in the energy efficiency of facilities. No matter what the economic constraints are, there are still hundreds of process improvements that a facility manager can make in order to improve the sustainability of facilities.

What do we need next? More education on sustainability for facility managers. The emphasis is required to shift from design practices to operational practices. Maybe a facility manager certification on sustainability is going to be the next big thing in creating greener and sustainable facilities around us.

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Created on Jun 22nd 2020 09:10. Viewed 292 times.

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