The ultimate guide to integrating sustainability into property management
Sustainability refers to a wide range of environmental, economic, and social criteria used to ensure the management’s effective maintenance of the company’s properties. This implies the management can meet their needs without compromising the ability of future processes.
Project managers have a critical role in integrating sustainability into the properties under their watch. They are an intrinsic part of daily property management for commercial issues that affect sustainability integration. Here is a step-by-step guide to integrating sustainability into project management.
Define the core sustainability provisions
The core sustainability provisions should be included in every property management service. These core provisions should allow applicability across the entire property sector. Property management professionals should incorporate all these core provisions in their property management offer to the clients. This will lead to uniformity in the kind of products and services offered.
Through these core provisions, the business will create a “level playing ground” when offering its sustainability services to the customers. Corporate sustainability ensures that the investors do seek not only economic benefits but also other social benefits.
Colorado Springs property managers from Evernest, Mynd, APM and Timberline provide smooth and hassle-free property management services that suit the sustainable property owners and all others in the same manner. This ensures that the property managers offer their services while caring for the tenants.
Develop best practices provisions
After defining the core sustainability provisions, the next step is usually developing best practice provisions that will help inform the project managers’ work. This will help them stick to the core provisions of the enterprise as outlined in the document.
Practice provisions provide great clarity, consistency, and specificity across the company. They provide a starting point for discussions related to property management. This is more of how the clients would like their needs to be met while safeguarding the interests of the company owners.
Developing project management sustainability toolkit
Now that you have developed the best practices for sustainability in project management, you need also to come up with a sustainability toolkit. Toolkit acts as guidance for every practice adopted by the managers. This toolkit can be updated frequently to incorporate the rising vital provisions and other great practices to provide future up-to-date guides to the other properties of the enterprise.
This is why the toolkit is viewed as a valuable resource for the project managers keen to integrate sustainability within their management services. Another importance of this toolkit is that it ensures that clients procure property management services within the enterprise’s core practices.
Provide sustainability training
You should provide sustainability training about what exactly sustainability in real estate is and then move on to advanced practices and incorporate them into the toolkit. Follow all the provisions outlined in the toolkit to develop a training program for the management under different projects.
The project managers will be responsible for implementing sustainability across all the departments in the company. Note that any training should be focused on how the company can use its resources to meet the clients’ needs without compromising its core provisions.
The core sustainability provisions for project management
The core provisions are the key activities that the project managers should undertake to integrate sustainability when offering clients services. As stated above, they are highly used as the starting point when the company’s owner is drafting project management agreements. Below is practical guidance on implementing the core sustainability practices in the toolkit.
Managing compliance and utilities
The project management compliance sustainability requirements at the management project should be relevant to the services provided by the company. Regarding utilities, there should be the provision of data procured on the customer’s behalf. It should be in the agreed format and frequency. You should procure energy and water review for the project management where reasonable and positive business cases can be expected.
Waste
You should provide waste collection data as per the stream for the services procured on behalf of the customers in the agreed frequency and format. The waste review should also be procured for the project management on behalf of the client where a reasonable business case is expected. The waste contractors should provide data on the waste collected when negotiating the contracts.
Procurement
Integrating sustainability is part of the due diligence process when selecting services from any third-party contractor. Ensure that you have incorporated all the sustainability requirements within the contracts signed for the supplies and all the appointed contractors by the project management leaders.
The contractual sustainability requirements for contractors and suppliers should be properly monitored throughout the contract duration.
Skills and employee engagement
All the employees delivering services for the project manager should have the appropriate skills and be competent to deliver the core provisions needed to integrate sustainability in the project management. Ensure that you communicate about the sustainability performance of the project management and all the initiatives undertaken through the appropriate channels.
