Search Results for: sustainability

January 20, 2016

Number of smart cities worldwide jumps 40 percent in past two years ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Facilities management, News, Property, Technology

According to a new report from Navigant Research, the total number of identified smart city projects worldwide has grown from 170 in the third quarter of 2013 to 235 today. The report examines the current state of global smart city development, covering the related aspects of the smart energy, smart water, smart transportation, smart buildings, and smart governments sectors, segmented by region. The authors of the report claim that, as the benefits of smart cities become clearer, the number of projects and partnerships supporting the cause is rapidly increasing. In the last few years, city leaders, central government ministries, and technology and service suppliers have announced a range of new smart city initiatives, incentives, and product and service offerings, while more cities are moving from one specific technology interest to a broader range of solutions that have multiple applications.

January 12, 2016

A cynic’s field guide to workplace terminology, part three ⁰

by Simon Heath • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

A New Year and a new chance for some people to heap more fresh corporate bullshit onto the already steaming pile. No matter how often writers like the ever excellent Lucy Kellaway mock and deride the propensity of people in organisations to apply cliches and nonsense in lieu of thought and imagination, we have to face an annual fresh tide of drivel and lazy thinking. So predictable is this yearly onslaught, that it appears to now be a subject for trendspotters, as a recent feature in The Telegraph highlighted. Of course, this is just general corporate speak and does not even begin to scratch the surface of what we have to endure in the more parochial world of workplace design and management. Which is why I have produced the latest update to my continually expanding lexicon of regrettable workplace terminology. You can read parts one and two here and here.

December 9, 2015

Offices and smart cities will drive uptake of the Internet of Things, claims report ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, News, Property, Technology

A new report from analysts Gartner claims that the roll out of the Internet of Things will be driven by innovation in commercial property and smart cities. The study, Internet of Things — Endpoints and Associated Services, Worldwide, 2015 claims that 1.6 billion connected things will be used by smart cities in 2016, an increase of 39 percent from 2015 (see Table 1). The authors of the report claim that smart commercial buildings, particularly those subject to Building Information Modelling technology will pioneer applications until 2017, after which consumers will become the dominant force as devices migrate to a new generation of smart homes. Commercial real estate benefits greatly from IoT implementation. IoT creates a unified view of facilities management as well as advanced service operations through the collection of data and insights from a multitude of sensors.

November 30, 2015

BRE acquires rival green building scheme to create new accreditation ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, Facilities management, News, Property

Those bewildered by the confusion of acronyms that surrounds building environmental standards will be pleased to hear that BRE has acquired a rival standard to merge with itsBREEAM accreditation. BRE claims that the acquisition of CEEQUAL, a sustainability scheme for civil engineering, allows it to ‘create a single, science based standard and certification tool for civil engineering and infrastructure projects’. As a result of the acquisition, CEEQUAL will transfer its operations to BRE Global after which CEEQUAL will then be delivered by the BREEAM certification team with support from a CEEQUAL management team. The move is supported by the Institution of Civil Engineers and has been prompted by ‘the industry’s desire for a single sustainability rating scheme that addresses the challenges that infrastructure clients, professions and contractors currently face in delivering more sustainable and resilient infrastructure.’

November 23, 2015

RIBA signs UN Compact as part of an increased focus on ethics ⁰

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

RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) has become a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and has undertaken to support its principles on human rights, labour standards, the environment and corruption. Joining the UNGC is part of the RIBA’s focus on ethics which has recently included co-founding a new coalition to develop a set of globally recognised ethics standards for real estate and related professional organisations. RIBA President Jane Duncan said: “As our profession changes and becomes increasingly international, so must our approach to developing and reinforcing professional ethics. Architecture has a direct impact on societies and economies; it shapes and influences the world we live in. For this reason, we architects have a duty to uphold the highest standards wherever we practice. I am delighted that RIBA has signed the UN Global Compact and undertaken to support and promote its principles.”

November 17, 2015

Best tall building in the world winner announced at Chicago event ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Architecture, Cities, Environment, News

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) Awards Jury has announced that Bosco Verticale, Milan, is the overall “2015 Best Tall Building Worldwide” at the 14th Annual CTBUH International Best Tall Building Awards Symposium, Ceremony & Dinner, held last week at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. In July, the CTBUH Awards Jury named a winner from each of the four competing regions in the world: Americas, Asia & Australasia, Europe, and Middle East & Africa. The Regional Winners were One World Trade Center, New York City, United States; CapitaGreen, Singapore; Bosco Verticale, Milan, Italy; Burj Mohammed Bin Rashid Tower, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Although the overall winner was primarily a residential tower, offices were well represented in the regional winners thanks to the inclusion of One World Trade Center and Capita Green.

November 5, 2015

Design for performance study looks to improve energy performance ⁰

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

Developers, owners and occupiers of buildings might expect that compliance with regulations will produce a building that is energy efficient in operation and well on its way towards the 2020 nearly-zero energy target mandated by a European Directive. In practice, the actual performance of most buildings falls well short of the design intent – the so-called performance gap. In Australia, this chronic problem has been eliminated for new office building projects in which clients and their teams sign up to – and then follow – a “Commitment Agreement” protocol to design, construct and manage their buildings to achieve agreed levels of actual in-use performance. Now with the backing of the Better Buildings Partnership, a four month study to develop a prototype UK scheme which embraces Australia’s ‘design for performance’ approach has been launched by a team led by Verco and including BSRIA, Arup and UBT.

October 28, 2015

UK firms turn to flexible working and wellbeing to bridge productivity gap ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

It’s not just larger organisations and governments that are having to grapple with the UK’s persistent ‘productivity puzzle’ but also smaller businesses who are increasingly turning to flexible working and other people centric initiatives to address the problem. That is one of the main findings of a new report from trade association Group Risk Development (GRiD). According to their survey, nearly a quarter of employers (23 percent) believe productivity is an issue facing their business. According to the office for National Statistics (ONS) this is a common problem across the entire UK economy as output per hour is stubbornly around 20 percent below the average for all G7 economies. This is the widest gap ever recorded and, according to GRiD is driving employers to seek ways of addressing their own shortfall with flexible working and wellbeing initiatives as well as investment in new equipment and technology.

October 26, 2015

An updated green building standard designed to meet wider business objectives ⁰

by Sue Gregson • Comment, Facilities management, Legal news, Property

The publication in September 2015 of the revised ISO 14001 Global Environmental Management Standard has been heralded as a move that will “shift business focus on the environment from compliance with regulations and direct operations, to placing the environment at the heart of thinking and strategy.” This will assist businesses around the world to respond to increasing global sustainability challenges and ensure long-term business success. Currently there are over 300,000 organisations worldwide that are certified to the ISO 14001 Standard, first published in 1996. According to the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment, (IEMA) ISO 14001 is the second most used standard companies employ to manage their performance globally, with 171 countries now represented. Its popularity as a management tool has been linked to both improved financial and environmental performance.

October 1, 2015

US sees biggest jump in working from home since 2008, claims study ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, Knowledge, News, Wellbeing

According to an analysis of the just-released 2014 American Community Survey (ACS) conducted by GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com, approximately 3.7 million US employees (2.5 percent of the workforce) called home their primary place of work in 2014. This represents a 6.5 percent increase and the largest year over year growth in the number of people working from home since before the recession. The ACS data is based on a nationwide survey of answers to the question “What was your primary means of travel to work during the survey week—’Worked at Home’ is one of the choices. The count only includes those who work at home at least half of the time. According to Global Workplace Analytics far more people work at home on a less frequent basis and many work in “third places” such as coffee shops, co-working facilities, libraries, and just about anywhere there’s an internet connection.

September 24, 2015

Weighing up the pros and cons of the BREEAM environmental standard ⁰

by Charles Marks • Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Workplace design

For some years there has been a growing awareness of the need to improve the environmental performance of buildings. This is closely linked to both the Government’s own international commitments to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent over the next 35 years and the need of organisations to act ethically and cut costs while they’re about it. Buildings are important in this regard because of their impact on the environment (and the bottom line). According to The Carbon Trust, buildings produce around 37 percent of the UK’s total carbon emissions, 40 percent of it from commercial buildings.This is commendable stuff but the real problems arise when it comes to meeting such laudable goals in practice. We are learning all the time about how to achieve the best results and we are helped in that with the availability of a number of increasingly sophisticated building environmental standards.

September 21, 2015

Five essential office design trends to look for in the near future ⁰

by Tom Brialey • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace design

Since the early Twentieth Century, business leaders have been experimenting with office design in an attempt to improve productivity. From the sea of forward-facing desks imagined by Frederick Taylor, to the infamous cubicle of the late 1960s, to today’s open-plan office, each innovation has said something about our changing relationship to work. In a Gensler survey with more than 2,000 participants, 90 percent of respondents indicated that better workplace design and layout result in better overall performance. The greatest developments of recent times have emerged from the tech giants of Silicon Valley, where businesses have blended playfulness, company culture and the collaborative benefits of open layouts to craft unique and engaging spaces. So where are we headed? Here are five major trends that are likely to have a lasting impact on the way we work.