Managing Resposible Property Investing (RPI)

The term Resposible Property Investing (RPI) was started by Gary Pivo (who has conducted research and written on the sustainability of buildings) and David Wood of the Responsible Property Investing Center that is housed at Boston College’s Center for Corporate Sustainability.  They define RPI as “a term that captures all the ways that investors can find and create value through the improving the economic, social and environmental profile of their real estate investments.” As you can probably tell this is an all encompassing term but one that can sum up many of the challenges you face in creating more sustainable corporate real estate. Terms such as:

• Smart Growth (e.g., transit-oriented development, walkable communities, mixed-use development)
• Social Equity and Community Development (e.g., affordable housing, community outreach, fair labor practices, workforce development)
• Urban Revitalization (e.g. goods and services provided to underserved communities, infill development, flexible interiors, brownfield redevelopment)
• Energy Conservation (e.g. energy efficient buildings, conservation retrofitting, green power generation and purchasing)
• Environmental Protection (e.g., water conservation, recycling, habitat protection)
• Worker Well-Being (e.g., plazas, indoor air quality, childcare on premises, handicapped access)
• Health and Safety (e.g., property security, avoiding hazards, first aid readiness).
• Local Citizenship (e.g. aesthetics, minimum neighborhood impacts, considerate construction, stakeholder engagement, historical preservation)
• Corporate Citizenship (e.g., regulatory compliance, sustainability disclosure, independent directors, and adoption of independent voluntary codes such as LEED, Energy Star, Green Seal, UN Principles for Responsible Investment, and Global Reporting Initiative.)

Information on the Center can be viewed at the following link: www.responsiblepropeerty.net Recently the Center along with the UNEP Financing Initiative published a brochure titled “Responsible Property Investing-Commiting and Engaging” www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/documents/responsible_property_toolkit1.pdf that provides several points on how to get your organization on the track of RPI and how to manage it.  As we are looking for management best practices that can be applicable to our members we thought it would be helpful to provide a link to this report and to list the points on how to manage an RPI initiative in your organization as it is similar to the challenges you face in trying to push sustainability through large amounts of corporate real estate.  The points are:

Internal Governance

1. Creating a specific department, or tasking a specific employee or group of employees, with managing RPI in its various guises across the entire business.
2. Forming cross-functional teams to support RPI

External Engagement

1. Incorporating RPI issues into requests for information/proposals
2. Integrating RPI into the investment reporting process
   
3. Engaging property managers and developers on information collection
4. Crafting an overarching RPI narrative

Please take a look at the report in it’s entirety as it provides more information on each of these points in Section V. Also please do not hesitate to contact us in the SRI Research Department if you have any questions. We are here to serve you in any way we can and particularly to make the challenge of sustainable corporate real estate easier.