Forshee

So you’ve decided to go green. Good choice, because with 80% of corporate America expecting to engage in green at least 16% of the time by next year, it’s a safe bet your peers and competitors are either doing likewise or about to. And considering the level of scrutiny real estate companies receive from investors, building occupants, lawmakers and consumers--not to mention the $24-billion price tag on annual commercial real estate energy consumption--it makes sense to incorporate Earth-friendliness as a core business strategy element, one that ties environmental consciousness to such bottom-line concerns as tenant attraction and retention, compliance, tracking and reporting.

As with any business activity, instilling environmental sensibilities into your product purchases requires gaining a clear understanding of what’s needed, measuring results and seeking continuous improvement. So how to get started? Here are some quick and easy steps:

Find out what you need.
The sensible first step is learning how to develop green purchasing strategies. A qualified team of procurement experts, including those with LEED accreditation, can evaluate portfolio-level product usage. Building owners and managers gain alternative suggestions for lighting, custodial and other supplies and their potential energy, waste and cost reductions through such assessments.

Revamp your purchasing process.
A common green misconception holds that upgrades involve tremendous capital and a long payback period. Actually, plenty of green initiatives’ payback periods are three years or less. Large capital expenditures such as cooling equipment aren’t always necessary; simple approaches, such as building commissioning, which involves tuning the HVAC systems to operate in sync, might do the job. Other relatively small yet productive changes include obtaining high-efficiency lamps with reduced mercury content and roll towels. A standardized offering of green operating supplies also makes purchasing eco-friendly maintenance, repair and operating supplies products easier.

Go paperless.
The days are numbered for the traditional costly, manual process of copying, mailing and storing paper invoices associated with accounts payable and other functions. That’s because top-line platforms available on the market automate the receiving, entering, coding and approval of invoices with a central processing facility that converts them into electronic data and images. Cycle-time improvements of 80% have been documented, and just imagine how much paper is saved.

Another paper-free option, portals, supports green initiatives by letting you eliminate the costly storage and distribution of property management documents. Lease-specific documents can be uploaded securely for access by authorized users. Tens of thousands of investors can receive financial reports online. If you’re generating a hundred-page report, how much time, money and paper could you, the property owner, save by avoiding the production and mailing costs of compiling such a document?

Enlist your CIO.
As commercial real estate companies seek advantages amid intense global competition and rising stakeholder expectations, chief information officers have become catalysts for adopting leading-edge technologies that improve processes, attract customers, and enhance products and services. Green strategies are no exception. Uniting disparate property management systems, including those that minimize paper, will become an increasingly major part of their job.

Continuously reevaluate.
Evaluating solutions and quantifying performance is a challenging but essential part of the green process. The key to success lies in continually benchmarking, evaluating, implementing, and reassessing. The best methodology for this process is a system of continuous improvement. While most commonly applied to manufacturing environments, the philosophy of small incremental changes is easily applied to a green purchasing program as well.

The green payoff.
In five years of alternative product selection purchases through opportunity assessments and online catalog purchases, energy savings of 283,694,325 KWH, energy cost savings of $28.4 million and carbon dioxide emission reductions of almost 395 million lbs. (the equivalent to removing 34,161 cars from the road) can be documented. Those numbers are rapidly changing as more organizations implement green purchasing programs.

Implementing a green purchasing program provides a useful framework for achieving economic, social and environmental sustainability across an entire portfolio of buildings. This course of action can be powerful yet uncomplicated—all it takes is the simple addition of a few product changes in the decision-making process, and the results will truly amaze your organization. The views expressed are the author's own.

Tom Forshee is director of sustainability and project operations for SiteStuff.