The varied levels of maintenance overseen by facility managers contribute significantly toward meeting sustainable goals and reducing the environmental footprint of buildings. Profits and budgets are an important pillar of sustainable operations. These suggestions will help create a checklist in working with suppliers to meet requirements for operations and maintenance planning in three categories:
- Green supply chain protocols and product selection;
- Maintenance to extend useful life; and
- End of Life (EOL) options.
Green supply chain protocols and product selection
As a purchaser, facility managers are concerned with failure to deliver regarding the gap between marketing and reality. To ensure green supply chain protocols, peel back the layers to determine if the message is supported in practice. A few recommendations to keep in mind—be aware of the generalities of product lifecycles and their impacts; understand green product attributes; and ask additional questions beyond the certification being used to get behind the marketing story.
For new materials, green supply chain protocols can improve operation efficiencies and budget planning. Having these protocols in place will establish parameters to ensure that suppliers understand and are able to meet your criteria. If you do not have a green purchasing policy in place, the following are some considerations for product selection:
- How do you use the product?
- How do you maintain the product?
- What support resources are available?
- What certifications are in place?
There is a wealth of information available around sustainable procurement and an industry of consultants with expertise for hire. As a starting point, identify the goods, services and equipment used. Then broaden your strategy to consider if these categories are designed, produced, transported, used, maintained and managed at end of life in an environmentally-, socially- and economically-responsible manner. It is important to define costs related to current practices and identify measurement strategies to reach your goals for improved efficiencies.
Sustainable procurement policies can help avoid faulty equipment, chemicals of concern and unsafe working conditions, not to mention inefficiencies and waste. Lower environmental impact and improved reputation with your stakeholders are additional benefits. It also has significant crossover with corporate social responsibility initiatives including environment, community, health and safety, ethics and financial accountability, diversity and labor practices.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has decided to launch the development of an international standard providing guidelines for social responsibility. The need for organizations in both public and private sectors to behave in a socially-responsible way is becoming a generalized requirement of society. ISO has chosen Swedish Standards Institute and the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards to provide joint leadership of the ISO Working Group on Social Responsibility (WG SR). The WG SR has been given the task of drafting an international standard for social responsibility that will be published in 2010 as ISO 26000.
Multi-attribute standards for green products look at the full lifecycle of products. One example is SMaRT© (Sustainable Materials Rating Technology©). Manufacturers with certified SMaRT products receive a federal government procurement preference pursuant to Executive Order 13514 reducing greenhouse gas emissions and climate pollution. SMaRT is the sustainable product standard certifying products best for the environment, economy and social equity. Prerequisites to certification include:
- No toxic Stockholm Treaty Chemicals including dioxins and/or polyvinyl chloride;
- ISO Compliant Life Cycle Assessment to identify supply chain impacts;
- Inventory of 1300 pollutants at the manufacturing and supplier facilities with credit for the percent reduced
up to 100 percent; - Reuse;
- High priority for climate pollution reduction including the SMaRT LEED© (Leadership in Energy and Environ-mental Design) credit; and
- Social equity indicators.
Maintenance to extend useful life
Having selected your products, don’t falter by slipping on proper maintenance to make products last longer. Decisions related to maintenance are the shared responsibility of manufacturers and users. Manufacturers must consider maintenance as part of the product lifecycle and provide guidance on how to properly install, clean and maintain products.
Facility managers and users are responsible for following recommendations, instituting green cleaning and ensuring that regular maintenance is scheduled. Each purchase of equipment or products should require maintenance instructions as part of the package. You don’t want to find yourself in the position of buying and not knowing how to maintain your purchase. The instructions need to be built into the preventive maintenance protocol for the facility. These steps will help products last longer, therefore affecting profitability.
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Although maintenance budgets may be stretched in tough economic times, it is important to show value by demonstrating the benefits of proper maintenance. It’s a pay now or pay later value judgment. Do you cut maintenance to balance the budget or have a better maintenance program to extend the life of systems and products? Sustainable product selection should give you better performance and longer life. Getting maximum value with extended life through preventative maintenance is more cost-conscious than short-term thinking.
To ensure proper levels of maintenance, apply the correct balance of reactive, preventative, proactive and preemptive maintenance, and eliminate low-value maintenance routines and use the savings to increase the frequency of high-value, high-return routines. One way to track maintenance and repair is to employ a computerized maintenance management system to assess equipment usefulness and economic lifecycles; forecast operating and capital budgeting needs; and provide audit trails for accreditation.
For those seeking or maintaining green building certification under LEED, commissioning addresses performance levels.
It is a key element in ensuring performance delivery around electrical and mechanical systems and may give an early warning of potential failures. Building automation systems ensure ongoing performance.
An effective building management system allows all of your building systems—comfort controls, lighting, fire safety, security and equipment—to operate in harmony. Depending on your requirements, the system should be easy to configure and deploy without the need for special training to use it. The data is delivered to tenants, administrators, a personal computer or a mobile device—wherever you need it.
Control systems allow you to track run times, filter conditions, ventilation rates, setpoint errors, air quality, pressurization and continual recommissioning. They employ proven energy management routines; alarm monitoring and reporting; and base building systems integration. They support high-performance green buildings for energy efficiency with:
- Energy consumption monitoring and reporting that track energy and utility usage against baselines to determine root causes of fluctuations;
- Due diligence assessment of utility vendor invoicing to ensure energy usage billed is in line with self-monitored and calculated values; and
- Hard data feedback for “C” levels to guarantee quantifiable energy performance data is readily available for decision makers and to deliver the information in metrics they understand.
End of Life options
It should now be clear that EOL product decisions should be part of the initial consideration. When legacy products reach EOL, is there a landfill diversion channel in place? Is your organization structured to address these systems?
With new products, remember to ask whether the technology exists to manage those products at EOL. The decisions are economic as well as environmental. Diverting from landfills and recycling have costs. Facility managers should understand the full impact of costs affiliated with landfill diversion.
Leading manufacturers try to manage EOL options so related expenses are equal to costs of landfill diversion. Many times that cost is a separate line item and sometimes it is hidden in the original price.
Green procurement and operations maintain the investment by ensuring the continued delivery of increased comfort and occupant satisfaction; a safe and healthy workplace; an efficient system with minimal energy and resource consumption; extended equipment life and reliability; and effective audit and reporting means. FMJ
What to ask before making the purchase
First and foremost, the product or service should meet your needs. Keep in mind that the explanation can be more important than the yes or no answer. For example, if a window cleaning product can’t clean a glass window, it really doesn’t matter if it is low in volatile organic compounds. If a heating, ventilation or air-conditioning system doesn’t keep you comfortable year around, then it doesn’t matter if it is energy efficient.
- Are the company’s manufacturing plants ISO 14000 certified?
- Does the company track its energy and water use annually?
- Is the amount of waste measured during manufacturing? How much goes to the landfill? How much is diverted from the landfill?
- Is the company working to reduce CO2 and other emissions? What is its carbon footprint?
- Does the company purchase or generate any energy from renewable sources?
- Does the company recycle throughout the products’ lifecycle?
- What natural resources go into the making of the product you are purchasing? Are there better alternatives?
- How does the product’s life expectancy compare to competitors’ products?
- Does the product fulfill your needs as well as being environmentally benign?
- Does the company publish a sustainability report or offer information on its Web site regarding environmental and social initiatives and activities?
- Does the company partner or support causes that benefit the environment and communities?
- Does the company disclose the good and the “in progress/needs improvement” efforts it makes related to the environment?
*Questions assembled by the Alliance for Sustainable Built Environments
About the author
As director of sustainability, Bill Gregory represents Milliken & Company with environmental and business organizations, serving on the boards of directors for the Alliance for Sustainable Built Environments, Carpet America Recovery Effort and Institute for Marketing Towards Sustainability.
