April 30, 2015
Sustainability Roundtable Inc.’s (“SR Inc”) year-round Sustainable Business & Enterprise Roundtable (SBER) service assists executives responsible for setting and driving the optimization and innovation policies for corporate operations and real estate. SR Inc assists multiple Member Executives at each Member-Client company and over the past six years has assisted more than 300 Member Executives who, in aggregate, have led in optimizing well more than a billion square feet of real estate.
SR Inc’s SBER service provides Member-Client companies with annual, confidential, industry specific, SBER Management Assessments & Recommendations as well as customized, annual Member Advisory Plans (MAPs) and individual consulting and support services at Special Request. In addition to this year-round one-to-one assistance, SR Inc has for more than six years developed and provided primary research supported Executive Guidance, Best Practice Case Studies, Solution Assessments, Tools, and Conferencing on Management Best Practices in more sustainable buildings and business.
In 2015, SBER Charter Members have focused SBER meetings and shared management research on two inflecting technical and market based “revolutions” that promise to reshape how Member Executives manage large real estate and corporate operation portfolios. The first nascent “revolution” SR Inc is examining through shared research on management best practices in 2015 is what SBER Charter Members and others have styled the Internet of Everything (“IOE”). The second – almost as young – upheaval is advancing quickly enough to be fairly described as “the renewable energy revolution.” Specifically, SR Inc is building on its years of management best practice research on building information systems and corporate use of renewable energy to investigate – through case based research, joint RFIs, Solution Assessments and iteratively developed Executive Guidance & Tools – what Member Executives need to know in 2015 about these two areas of accelerating technical and market based change as they budget for 2016.
Consequently, SR Inc was pleased to have several dozen Member-Client enterprises including contributing participants AEW Capital Management, Bentall Kennedy, Bloomberg, Cisco, EMC, Genentech, MetLife, MIT Investments, NetApp, Oracle, PG&E, and Salesforce gather for an SBER Q1 Symposium on March 26th to begin Member Executive discussion on two SBER shared 2015 projects: “Portfolio Managers Meet the IOE” and “Portfolio Managers Meet The Renewable Energy Revolution.” SR Inc was especially pleased to have lead discussants Ali Ahmed, Global Lead for Energy & Sustainability at Member-Client Cisco and James Gray-Donald, VP of Sustainability at Member-Client Bentall Kennedy join in-person to connect with other Member-Clients and new participants such as Partners HealthCare, VistaPrint and Winn Development. SR Inc has described Ali Ahmed’s participation in a preceding post, so what follows will focus on James Gray-Donald’s contribution.
SR Inc invited James Gray-Donald, a multi-year Member Executive and a global leader in more sustainable operations and real estate, to present at the Symposium and share best practices and lessons learned based on his experience working on building information integration initiatives across portfolios as well as his experience with renewable energy at Bentall Kennedy , a multi-billion dollar diversified real estate investor.
The Change Management Challenge of Integrating Information Systems Across a Large Portfolio
Mr. Gray-Donald kicked off the discussion by describing Bentall Kennedy’s holistic, multi-year and milestone based approach to data gathering and modeling to improve energy efficiency portfolio-wide. He reviewed Bentall Kennedy’s “Seven Steps to Success” in portfolio optimization, which he led in developing and prompted him to lead in authoring the UN Environmental Programme Finance Initiative’s (UNEP FI) Investor Briefing on energy efficiency, and energy efficiency retrofits in investment real estate. He also shared lessons learned and successes he and his colleagues have experienced well after ‘the seventh step’ of the UNEP FI guide he led in developing. One challenge that Mr. Gray-Donald noted was the multi-faceted challenge associated with piecing together data from regions and countries that differ in their metrics, data collection process, and organizational and technical systems.
The challenge of integrating disparate legacy systems in a timely, secure, and cost effective manner is one many Member-Clients have faced. For this reason, proven solutions will be examined in detail in SR Inc’s developing SBER 2015 Executive Guidance & Tools. But it is worth noting here that when evaluating potential software-solution providers, Mr. Gray-Donald encouraged other Member Executives to consider the ability and enthusiasm of these partners to collaborate over an extended deployment and then well after it.
When discussing what was needed to create an effective, integrated, information system across a large portfolio of buildings, Mr. Gray-Donald went beyond the obvious cost and functionality requirements that shape the RFP process for any enterprise system. Specifically, he emphasized the importance of creating a portfolio-wide solution that is at once: (a) secure; (b) accessible to a broad range of users; (c) compelling to the most relevant users; and, (d) adaptable to a particular portfolio’s needs. He suggested that it was ultimately time efficient to do the hard work of bringing the most experienced, expert, and influential end-users into the process to delineate and confirm the exact and enduring categories, language, metrics, and decision-making process the different users of the solution(s) will require. Furthermore, he noted the critical importance of building the right internal and external team when integrating new technologies at scale, the possibilities of new hires being required and the clear need for post-deployment training that is budgeted, regular, tracked, and accountable.
In accord with this advice, several executives made comments underscoring that the effectiveness of a related “change management” process was as important to cost effectiveness of an integrated information system as technical merit.
A Large Real Estate Owner’s Limited Deployment of Renewable Energy
James Gray-Donald indicated that Bentall Kennedy has not yet relied significantly on renewable energy to reduce its carbon footprint, though he did note two exceptions. In Alberta, Canada, approximately 37% of Bentall Kennedy’s electricity is offset by the purchase of Renewable Energy Credits, and the company has installed rooftop solar panel arrays at multiple locations in California. However, he emphasized the caution companies should take when installing rooftop solar arrays, as the potential for roof damage when panels are removed/the building is sold may lead to extensive legal challenges and fees.
Regularly updated and detailed guidance regarding advantages and challenges of different types of renewable energy and different transaction structures – in both U.S. and international markets – is available to SR Inc Member-Clients at request, even as SR Inc works with SBER Member Executives such as James Gray-Donald regarding what executives most need to know about renewable energy in 2015. SR Inc appreciates Mr. Gray-Donald’s on-going willingness to share insights with SBER Member Executives directly and through SR Inc detailed and highly focused SBER Executive Guidance, Tools, and Guidebooks for leading buyers. His expertise and experience, along with several dozens other top participating expert operating executives, will deepen SR Inc’s shared research on relevant management best practices and help SBER Member Executives develop informed strategies to navigate the accelerating technical, regulatory, and market based change that is reshaping the “IOE” and renewable energy in 2015.
