Smart Workplace Strategy & Sustainability Master Plan & Implementation for an International Real Estate Portfolio

‍Challenges

‍A Global Fortune 200 technology leader entered a period of intense organic and external growth marked by several large acquisitions. In a highly competitive and fast-moving industry, the company understood that their human capital was both extremely valuable and highly vulnerable.

After an initial sustainability infrastructure assessment in 2012 and a first master plan, in 2020, the company set new ambitious carbon reduction goals aligned with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to reduce the company’s carbon footprint by 50% by 2030, compared to its 2018/19 baseline. Altanova was challenged to define a cost-effective pathway to achieve these goals. Altanova continued working with the company to adapt and adjust the pathway in response to the company’s growth and change in market conditions as we approach the target year.

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Approach

Altanova conducted additional benchmark surveys, targeted audits and deployed consolidated metering systems to improve data reliability. Then we developed advanced energy and financial models for approximately 60 company sites worldwide. Models include operational improvements and capital upgrades to existing sites that achieve deep energy efficiency savings based on best-in-class infrastructure management approach, as well as new and emerging technologies; on-site installation of smart microgrids hosting larger capacity of solar photovoltaic panels; investment into new off-site solar PV installation within the same grid through energy purchase agreements; and direct purchases of electricity from existing renewable energy plants.  

This approach was integrated with previous Altanova-developed Smart Workplace strategy that allowed the group to reduce its Real Estate footprint by 25% while significantly increasing employees’ satisfaction with their workplace and perceived productivity. At the core of this strategy is targeted investments in the workplace to

• Better align the space design and features with employees' needs (activity-based workplace), such as collaboration, creativity or focus work. International Design Guidelines support this design through a comprehensive set of practices, encompassing indoor comfort, lighting, water efficiency, waste reduction, biophilia, and sustainable materials selection, among others.

• Leverage healthy building frameworks such as Fitwel and WELL. These frameworks help to ensure that sites are operating with the full health and wellbeing of the occupants at the center.
• Continuous IAQ (Indoor Air Quality) monitoring to ensure that actual environments are operating at the standards set. Periodic workplace satisfaction surveys are also conducted to gather feedback on how spaces are being experienced by its users. This combination of quantitative readings and qualitative feedback helps to collect actionable insights into these spaces.

The resulting decarbonization Roadmap includes multiple viable pathways with attractive ROIs but also large capital investments that are often unattractive to large organizations whose business isn’t historically centered on power infrastructures and real estate developments.

Altanova’s established credibility and deep culture of caring partnership has played a key role by engaging several internal functions and executive stakeholders around a common vision within the company to uncover submerged strategic value associated with Real Estate & Infrastructures’ decarbonization plan.  

The innovative business approach associated with our all-hands-on-deck decarbonization master plan, has resulted in a vastly superior business case, financeable and highly beneficial to the overall company growth.  

In return, this holistic and business-embedded approach to the company’s sustainability transformation allows our client to invest further into their ambitious ESG and sustainability goals to more deeply develop stakeholders’ engagement and efficiency.

Altanova has also developed software tools for corporate real estate portfolios, to keep track of building, design and operations information as well as how sites are performing against environmental targets. The measure value impact to support the business case for investments into these spaces.

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