October 17, 2014

The solution to complex issues like green building is to become more sophisticated

by Paul Goodchild • Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Workplace design

One of the current preoccupations of the World Green Building Council is to demonstrate how green business is good business. The way it is presenting this argument is intriguing because as well as extolling the most anticipated benefits of green building design, such as lower energy bills, it is linking green building design with human factors such as productivity, wellness and work-life balance. It has produced a number of reports on this subject, most recently in September with a publication titled Health, Wellbeing and Productivity in Offices which found ‘overwhelming evidence’ of the link between office design and productivity. What such compelling reports also highlight are the complex challenges we face and the sophisticated approach we must take to environmental issues and corporate social responsibility. Fortunately this is already exhibited by many organisations.

October 15, 2014

Work begins on ‘living laboratory’ to test eco-build products

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, News, Property

According to Constructing Excellence, buildings collectively account for around half the UK national output of carbon dioxide. To help address this, work has begun on the construction of a new £1.4 million ‘living laboratory’ at the Eden Project in Cornwall, where new eco-build products can be installed, tested and monitored. The Green Build Hub (GBH), is designed as a training centre that encourages inward investment by specialist green suppliers by enabling them to showcase and test innovative products. The project, by the Cornwall Sustainable Building Trust (CSBT), made possible by an investment of £1.1 million from the European Regional Development Fund Convergence Programme, aims to deliver a BREAAM ‘Outstanding’ building that acts as a resource of specialist green building knowledge. The GBH design team includes Gilbert & Goode Ltd, Ward Williams Associates, PBWC Architects, Hoare Lea, CDEC Ltd and TClarke Ltd; with an expected completion date of June 2015. More →

October 9, 2014

Winner and shortlist announced for UK Prime Minister’s Better Public Building Award

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, News, Property, Public Sector

Wiltshire County Council Offices

The (rather long) shortlist of nominees for the Prime Minister’s Better Public Building Award 2014 has been announced by the UK Cabinet Office. Hosted as part of The British Construction Industry Awards which aim to ‘recognise all-round excellence in construction, including the overall design, and delivery of buildings and civil engineering projects’ the award’s original nominees were assessed on a range of standards including economic and social value. As well as the rather impressive new headquarters for Wiltshire County Council (above), the Government claims the shortlist includes a college building that is engineered to be one of the quietest buildings in the country as well as a building that will almost entirely be powered by fish oil. Previous winners include Tate Modern and the Velodrome at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The Government, ever keen to be down with the kids, has produced a Buzzfeed feature on the nominated projects.

September 25, 2014

Dubai unveils plans for sustainable ‘Perfect City’ real estate hub

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Environment, News, Property

Undeterred by the seriously stuttering start to existence of Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, the government of Dubai (but of course) has announced plans for what it claims will be the first specialised sustainable city in the world. The plans for the characteristically modestly named ‘Perfect City’ were unveiled this week at the Cityscape 2014 trade show in Dubai and form one of the centrepiece projects of a seven year programme of development masterminded by Dubai Land Development (DLD). Work begins on the project begins next year and is expected to complete in 2021. As with Dubai Media City and Dubai Internet City the idea is to create a sustainable hub for a particular industry, in this case real estate. The plans include a canal, 20,000 trees and the provision that 75 percent of the City will be made up of green space.

September 18, 2014

Global launch of healthy buildings report announced for World Green Building Week

by Sara Bean • Environment, Events, Facilities management, News

World Green Building Week 2014 takes place next week (22 – 27 September) with the theme for this year of ‘Get up, Green up’. Created in 2009 to promote a more connected, more interactive, and more public conversation around the role buildings play in creating a sustainable future, this year’s WGBW will feature a range of events held around the world; including Australia, US, Hungary and the United Arab Emirates. On Monday 22 September, as part of WGBW, UK-GBC is hosting a webinar looking at the Ökobau.dat, the German National LCA database for construction, and on Wednesday 24 the global launch event of the WorldGBC ‘Health, wellbeing and productivity in offices: the next chapter for green building’ report, which looks at health, wellbeing and productivity in offices, following an extensive project involving over 50 industry experts from around the world. More →

September 15, 2014

How we travel to work has enormous impact on wellbeing, claims new research

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, News

Part of London’s planned cycling infrastructure around Parliament Square

New research has further highlighted the important role that the mode of transport we choose to get work has on our physical and psychological wellbeing. Walking or cycling to work is better for people’s mental health than driving to work, according to the research by health economists at the University of East Anglia and the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR). The report ‘Does active commuting improve psychological wellbeing?’ was published today in the journal Preventive Medicine and draws on 18 years of data from 18,000 people. It follows on the heels of two other reports published last month in the British Medical Journal and Science Direct which make related claims about the careful choices we should make about how we get to work.

September 2, 2014

Office planting improves workers’ quality of life and productivity finds study

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, News, Workplace design

Claims by office designers and suppliers that office planting has wider health benefits for occupiers than just making the place look more attractive have been given a boost in a new academic study which provides some empirical evidence. In the first field study of its kind, researchers found enriching a ‘lean’ office with plants could increase productivity by as much as 15 per cent. The study, which involved academics from the University of Exeter; the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, and the University of Queensland, Australia examined the impact of ‘lean’ and ‘green’ offices on staff’s perceptions of air quality, concentration, and workplace satisfaction, and monitored productivity levels over subsequent months in two large commercial offices in the UK and The Netherlands. It concludes that ‘green’ offices with plants make staff happier and more productive than ‘lean’ designs stripped of greenery. More →

August 14, 2014

Sustainable buildings are not more costly to construct, finds report

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, News, Property

The widely held belief that sustainable buildings are more costly to construct is dispelled in a new report which shows that achieving lower BREEAM ratings can in fact, incur little or no additional cost. Researchers from Sweett Group and BRE examined the actual costs and savings associated with a wide range of sustainable building strategies. The research team applied cost data from real construction projects to three case study buildings – an office, secondary school and community healthcare centre – to produce detailed capital and operational cost information. The report; Delivering sustainable buildings: Savings and payback also reveals the associated payback to be gained from reduced utility costs and finds that even where achieving higher BREEAM ratings incurs some additional costs, this can be paid back within two to five years through the reduced costs of operating a more sustainable building. More →

July 22, 2014

Corporate social reponsibility remains a vital part of the business armoury

by Mark Sait • Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Insight promotion

There is now an unstoppable energy for radical change in the way that companies of all sizes conduct their Corporate Social Responsibility duties. There are compelling economic and social reasons for companies to construct new ways of thinking and practice around CSR that go way beyond just doing something worthy or nice, from building effective partnerships to attracting top employees. Some companies prefer terms like ‘corporate responsibility’, ‘corporate conscience’, ‘corporate citizenship’, ‘social performance’, ‘sustainability’ or even ‘future-proofing’ over CSR. But the core CSR principles are that a business voluntarily commits to embracing responsibility for its actions and to impacting positively on the environment, on society and on consumers, employees and other stakeholders. More →

July 22, 2014

BIFM survey reveals lukewarm approach to sustainable facilities management

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, Facilities management, News

Sustainable facilities management A new report from the British Institute of Facilities Management reveals the lukewarm approach many UK organisations have to sustainable business practices generally and sustainable FM in particular. The study, based on online research carried out in the Spring with the University of Reading found that, while an overall majority (60 percent) of facilities managers think sustainability is effectively integrated in to their businesses, most operate on the ‘border of compliancy’. The report makes this conclusion based on the fact that its survey showed that over three quarters of respondents (78 percent) claimed that the main driver for the development of sustainability policies is corporate image and a similar proportion (77 percent). The report concludes that this ‘suggests a ‘box-ticking’ approach to sustainability instead of businesses embracing and investing in longer-term practices and the advantages of spending to save’.

July 15, 2014

Climate committee exposes limited progress on energy efficiency of buildings

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, News

In its latest progress report to Parliament, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the statutory body set up to advise the government on meeting long-term carbon goals, says that progress has been limited in energy efficiency improvement in the commercial and industrial sectors and previous good progress in residential energy efficiency fell away with the new policy regime in 2013.While there are specific examples of organisations that have made progress, much potential remains unexploited. This is because the policy landscape is complex and has mixed incentives. It recommends that policies should be simplified to lower administrative costs while, at the same time, improving delivery. There is a need to strengthen incentives and at the same time rationalise the number of policy instruments, leading to lower administrative costs as well as better delivery. More →

July 7, 2014

Green building design ‘goes mainstream’ in major US cities

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Environment, News, Property, Workplace design

Minneapolis – the home of US green building design

It’s not just Europe that is experiencing an explosion of interest in green building design. According to a new report from CBRE and Maastricht University, the past ten years have seen a transformation in the way the US corporate real estate market approaches the environmental performance of buildings. According to the National Green Building Adoption Index for 2014, produced by CBRE there has been a remarkable increase in the application of green building standards in the thirty most important regional commercial property markets in the US. Based on data from the US Green Building Council, the number of office buildings which are LEED* or Energy Star** certified has surged since 2005. The proportion of LEED certified buildings in America now stands at 5 percent, up from under 0.5 percent over the course of the survey period. The total proportion of office space which now has some form of green accreditation is just under a fifth.