Let’s Change the Subject and Talk About Building Health Checks
Just like people, the buildings around us need to be checked regularly by facilities and property managers through ‘building health checks’. The phrase may be an unfamiliar one to many, but as global facilities and property management firms start to standardise and improve their care of buildings, it’s time for you to consider whether a building health check is in order.
How do you health check a building?
It all starts with data. Without data, it is impossible to know the current situation that your building is in, and that means you cannot make positive decisions for future management.
Studies have revealed the extent that buildings are a hidden creators of carbon, hiding in plain sight. A United National Environment Program report revealed that buildings and their construction account for 36% of global energy use and 39% of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions annually.
Buildings are creating carbon by:
- Operational carbon emissions: lighting, heating, and cooling
- Embodied carbon: manufacturing materials, transporting materials to sites, associated with construction and asset replacement
- Waste carbon: plumbing, waste removal, lack of recycling
While the media and our attention is focused on air travel and fast fashion, we forget that buildings are all around us. Our biggest cities are releasing carbon into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate in human history, and without changes to the way we manage those buildings, it’s going to be impossible for countries to meet their low carbon or carbon neutral goals.
How can I tell if my building is unhealthy?
Just like a person will experience symptoms if they are experiencing bad health, a building will start to display symptoms if it is unhealthy. These symptoms can include rocketing energy costs, an increase in comfort complaints from employees or tenants, and mounting costs due to a poorly performing equipment which has not been commissioned or maintained effectively.
But you have to remember that by definition, almost every building is unhealthy. It is yet to be seen whether there are any genuinely carbon neutral buildings in the world, and while there are claims of these being built every year, in terms of percentages they pale in comparison to the millions of buildings already constructed. Those which may claim carbon neutrality will, without doubt, hold a ‘hidden’ element of embodied carbon.
Essentially, unless your building has been built specifically in the last five years with the UK government targets of carbon neutral buildings by 2050 in mind, your building will have some elements that are unhealthy and causing damage not only to the environment, but to your bottom line. A building health check empowers you to see how unhealthy your property is, in addition to identifying improvements.
How can a building be more carbon neutral?
“To me, Demand Logic is like doing a health check of your building. What it’s really great at doing is gathering lots and lots of data and analysing it really quickly.” Jane Wakiwaka, Sustainability Manager, The Crown Estate
Working with some of the world’s leading property companies, we empower them to perform health checks on their buildings and the results speak for themselves. Mace reduced their energy bills at their London HQ by 10% within a year. At the Deutsche Asset Management Fund, managed by JLL, the cost of the health check was covered within 4 months thanks to savings identified in the report.
As you can see, these small incremental changes can make a huge difference to the unhealthy buildings you manage. A building health check will deliver improvements on efficiencies, making it much easier for facilities and property management teams to proactively plan in maintenance work. You’ll see an improvement in cost, lowering the running costs which in turn means a reduction in energy usage, contributing to a decreased carbon footprint - not to mention a reduction in service charges for your tenants. Last but by no means least, you’ll see an improvement in productivity, as the healthier building will help workers to be more engaged and focused.
Changing an unhealthy building leads to better business health
For most businesses around the world, the buildings they own are often the biggest assets of that company. Just like any other assets, you should ensure that they are working harder for you and it’s impossible for a building to do that if it’s unhealthy.
It’s possible to make huge changes through incremental updates to the way a building is managed, and that puts the power right in your hands. As almost all of us live and work in buildings around the world, making the active decision to perform a building health check is one way to make everyone’s lives better - and make a positive step for the environment and your pocket.
Demand Logic empowers you to do just that. The platform reveals the health of your building immediately, giving you the tools to make decisions for the betterment of everyone who uses it. Working with our existing partners, we helped identify over £10m and 76,000 tonnes of carbon savings in 2019.
Find out how Demand Logic can help you illustrate the health of your building.
