A sustainability module for asset management databases for owners of building portfolios – a suggested specification
Despite the un-snappy blog title, we think this is a necessary topic. Many building portfolio owners have asset management systems of one sort or another and these are geared towards compliance and maintenance. In our experience this is the case for social landlords, property fund managers and other portfolio holders.
What’s lacking is a sustainability module that connects with existing databases and stores sustainability data. There are numerous key benefits of such a database:
- it allows portfolio owners to manage their way to a sustainable stock for existing buildings.
- when a new building is added to the management database, all that value data that is often known on a new building, can be captured in one place – see our previous blog for an example
- easy to provide all data needed for sustainability reporting – e.g. SECR, ESOS and ESG
- easy to provide data for internal quarterly reporting to senior teams
Our suggested specification
Here’s a rough sketch of what we suggest for each building in the portfolio:
- Energy / CO2 – a key topic on everyone’s mind
- Known features such as glazing type, solar PV – this is often on databases already, but there could be missing bits
- kWh consumed in any time period – input kWh, fuel type, data source and time period it applies to – to be updated at least annually
- total floor area
- Water – not on everyone’s mind yet but water scarcity is a key issue and a basic human need
- Known water efficiency fittings – taps, showers, meters – source of the data and time collected
- Water consumption and time period data applies to – to be updated at least annually
- Occupancy of the building during the same time period – water consumption is often proportional to occupancy, unless there is a leak
- Flood risk – again a really important topic that can be extremely disruptive for building occupiers and is projected to get worse in coming years
- Flood risk and date flood risk assessed – needs to be updated at least every three years
- Known flood mitigation features (soakaways, swales etc) and their maintenance requirements
- Building specific responsive actions in the event of a flood – to be exercised and documented each year – there are a lot of things that could be done
- Who is responsible for maintaining local surface water drainage – contact details
- Overheating risk – more heat waves are projected in coming years and hot buildings can be a source of irritation to occupiers
- Known risk reduction features (aircon, external shading, adequate ventilation etc)
- Thermal comfort survey results for occupants – ideally annually
- Waste – always a visible feature in and around buildings
- Known sustainable waste management features – most likely internal waste recycling bins
- Amount of waste generated plus time period and data source – normally available from waste contractors
- Disposition of waste – again available from waste contractors
- Biodiversity – an issue gradually going up the sustainability agenda, especially useful if you have land that can be used for vegetation
- Area of land within the curtilage – all emerging measures of biodiversity require some knowledge of land area
- Area and type of vegetation within the curtilage – plus canopy size of any trees
- Updated as and when new data is known
Social sustainability
If portfolio owners really want to get ahead of the curve and manage properties ready for the future then these options could be added to the database:
- Life satisfaction survey results
- Worthwhile life survey results
- Social connection opportunities
- Crime and ASB statistics
- Walkscore – how easy is it to do day to day things around the building
Next steps
There’s a few options here:
- Please take these suggestions and work with your existing asset database providers to incorporate the fields into the database
- Work with local software specialists to develop a stand-alone module that can link to your existing database
- Use in-house IT/software teams to develop the stand-alone module – possibly using systems such as Power BI
In all cases, if you’d like our input or assistance please feel free to be in touch. We can help with detailed design and then subsequent testing to make sure the systems generate the right results.
Photo by Jan Antonin Kolar on Unsplash