Schal supports sustainable business operations with new environmental benchmarking service

15 June 2010

Schal Sustainability has launched a new Environmental benchmarking service, developed to assist businesses in ensuring their internal and external operations are in line with current environmental best practice.

With sustainability at its core, as its name suggests, Schal Sustainability has, for more than a decade,  provided environmental assessment services for buildings during construction - ensuring that designs are environmentally-efficient and user-friendly. Responding to an increasing industry demand for its services, Schal is now sharing its accrued expertise with building managers, facilities managers and companies with medium /large property portfolios, working alongside them as BREEAM in-Use auditors, whilst concurrently helping reduce operational costs.

The BREEAM In-Use model forms the framework for Schal’s new service.

BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) is a new scheme aimed at helping building managers reduce the running costs and improve the environmental performance of existing buildings.

Since its launch in 2009, BREEAM In-Use has provided the standard for best practice in sustainable design, quickly becoming the de facto measure used to describe a building's environmental performance. Consisting of a standard easy-to-use assessment methodology and third-party verification - provided by Schal Sustainability - BREEAM In-Use provides a clear and credible route map to improving sustainability.

Schal Sustainability’s new environmental benchmarking services benefits from being overseen by BRE, BREEAM’s Conceptual Parent Company, who will ensure that the standards of assessment are continually improved to reflect all recent advances in sustainability.

Richard Johnson, Schal Sustainability Group Manager, explains: “A company that is committed to mitigating its environmental impact and making firm strides in reducing energy requirements needs to have a strategic approach to ensuring continual improvement, as well as being able to report upwards and externally on their approach to sustainability.

“Third-party verification and periodic reviews are vital in making sure this process is followed properly.”

He continues: “Using the BREEAM In-Use model Schal Sustainability assesses an organisation or a building’s approach to the environment and provides verification, certification and bespoke advice for continual improvement.”

“Where once the CSR policy benefits and “green kudos” would have been the major business benefits derived from environmental benchmarking, these days it is transformed from a “desirable” into an “essential” -  an absolute necessity for businesses if they are to ensure that their operations and assets comply with current legislation.”

In addition to the obvious CSR and legislative benefits that this service will provide, Schal Sustainability also expects that the continued relationship with its clients throughout the lifecycle of the building (from construction and into operation) will likely deliver enhanced value and marketability of property assets as well as a transparent platform for negotiating building improvements with landlords and owners.

Schal Sustainability additionally expects to bring HR benefits to businesses through this new service,  including the chance to improve employee engagement through being seen to implement sustainable business practices,  as well as improvements in employees’  satisfaction with their working environment; with the potential for significant improvements in productivity.

From its decade at the heart of this burgeoning business sector, Schal Sustainability is passionate about how the environmental performance of an organisation’s built assets can be the pivotal factor in its sustainability credentials and carbon footprint.  The consultancy also prides itself on an in-depth knowledge of the costs associated with operating a building - with soaring energy prices and the current gloomy economic outlook, cutting energy, water, waste and other associated overheads can be a relatively easy way of improving profitability.

This new service enables us to take a holistic approach in providing a client with a genuine badge of proven sustainability as well as the technical expertise to generate continual improvement in the future,” Richard Johnson says.

This whole-of-life approach has recently gained Schal recognition at the 2010 BRE awards for the first International BREEAM In Use, carried out on the British Embassy in Berlin.

Links

  BREEAM Assessments

  back to 2010 news