Do you have a Chief Sustainability Officer?

As pressure mounts on the built environment to achieve key sustainability measures and fast track towards net-zero emissions, the C-suite now has a new member - Chief Sustainability Officer.

Sustainability is now a key performance metric for building owners and managers. Managing sustainability across a portfolio of buildings is now a full-time job that requires someone who can understand how to operate assets at their peak, drive new initiatives to deliver better sustainability outcomes and stay on top of regulatory and legislative change.

Pursuing a sustainability agenda is not easy. Delivering on those sometimes conflicting goals of operational efficiency, new initiatives and compliance needs someone who can build alliances across the business so that everyone works together. Setting targets is not enough. The Chief Sustainability Officer needs to be able to influence business and technical people and create a culture where sustainability becomes part of the organisation's DNA.

While creating a framework and strategy is challenging, being able to articulate it so everyone is engaged and committed is far harder.

One of the most critical tools the Chief Sustainability Officer can use to influence stakeholders is unambiguous information that can clarify, in real time, whether you’re on target or missing your goals. How do you know, right at this moment, if the building is achieving, exceeding or lagging on its NABERS rating?

If a building owner fails to meet their NABERS rating, they may be faced with having to return rent to tenants for failing to meet contractual obligations. The key to achieving, maintaining and exceeding a NABERS rating comes down to quickly identifying issues before they become problems and resolving them as quickly as possible. The only way to do this is to have timely access to the right data so that real-time decisions can be made and to ensure regulatory and corporate reporting is accurate.

Chief Sustainability Officers need accurate data and insights. They need to be able to answer questions like:

• How do I improve my NABERS rating?
• How do you maximise the ROI on my CAPEX?
• How do I get the most value from my existing assets?
• How can I reduce energy use and carbon emissions?

This is why CIM created the PEAK platform. Before PEAK, operational data about equipment performance was locked away. But we found a way to extract that data and bring together information that was previously unusable and turn it into actionable intelligence.

Extracting and presenting data from the plant and equipment in one building, or a portfolio or properties is just the start. That data, combined with powerful analytics, can tell you with pinpoint accuracy what the problem is and why it occurred. And, even more powerfully, PEAK can help you detect issues before they escalate into problems.

QIC Global Real Estate (QICGRE) was able to use the insights generated by CIM’s building analytics platform PEAK, to optimise the Eastland Shopping Centre heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) plant and equipment to deliver a 15.4% combined demand reduction across the shopping centre on peak demand days.

The GPT Group was able to reduce its electricity consumption by almost 9% and prevent the emission of 1600 tonnes of CO2 through better operations and decision-making. That was driven by data and analytics received through the PEAK platform.

The Chief Sustainability Officer may be the newest member of the C-suite but their influence reaches almost every corner of the organisation. They conduct an orchestra of different people to operate a building harmoniously and with great precision. The notes in this building symphony come from the data that the PEAK platform provides.