Facility Manager's Environmental Role

“Sooner or later, we will have to recognise that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.” - Evo Morales

The importance of sustainability and environmental issues in today’s facility management role is wide ranging. However, the relationship between people and their surroundings is vital. 

People spend up to 90% of their time indoors and so ensuring a clean, secure and healthy built environment is as important as protecting the natural external environment. You as facility managers will have a significant impact on the local and global environment and in turn how people work, how they feel and their general well-being. This will affect facility managers working in all types of estates – residential, industrial, leisure, manufacturing, educational and offices. 

Your role of facility manager in the organisation’s sustainability agenda derives from the impact of the built environment which you are responsible for. Building have high energy consumption demands and produce high volumes of waste and yet they are frequently empty. Other impacts that you must minimise include parking and noise in the community; workplace conditions affecting the health and wellbeing of occupants; and employment conditions. 

There are 14 categories that you can use to develop more sustainable facility management practices:

1. Management
2. Emissions to air
3. Land contamination
4. Workforce occupants
5. Local environmental and community
6. Life cycle or building / products
7. Energy management
8. Water management
9. Use of resources
10. Waste management
11. Market place
12. Human rights
13. Biodiversity
14. Transport

Each of these categories can be investigated from an environmental, social, economic or governance viewpoint. Each of your service lines or operational activities can also be examined against each of the 14 sustainability categories. This will provide a complex matrix of priorities and identify improvement opportunities or actions to reduce negative impacts and enhance positive impacts.