The work we do with clients on reducing their energy costs and improving the sustainability of their properties is mirrored in the attention we give to our own environmental impacts from how we run our business. Both are based on a practical approach that is designed to deliver tangible, long lasting reductions in energy costs and environmental footprints.

Visit our Sustainability Solutions microsite.

Managing

We've been committed to improving the environmental performance of our business for many years now and have built a programme to ensure that this commitment is translated into practice in a clear, embedded way. Click here to read our environmental policy (PDF 207KB). Our approach has gained us a company wide certification to ISO14001, the leading standard for environmental management, since 2005. Our certification includes external audits of all our offices over a three year rolling programme, providing us with on-going verification that the whole company is moving forward in a coordinated way.

Measuring

We monitor our environmental performance through our Energy and Carbon Intelligence System (ECIS), a market leading software platform being implemented in partnership with CarbonSystems. ECIS provides us with real-time management information on our energy use from buildings and travel and has given us real insight into the practicalities of addressing our carbon footprint. ECIS is also offered to our clients as part of our wider Sustainability Solutions. Our use of water is monitored through systems operating in parallel to ECIS.

Reducing

It has been a natural step for us to take this experience of managing and measuring our environmental impacts and adopt bold challenges for reducing our carbon footprint. Our first target was set in 2010, when we became a  founding business partner of 10:10, an initiative to reduce carbon footprints that year by 10%. By making our business more efficient and environmentally friendly, we were able to secure a 12% reduction in absolute energy use in the buildings we occupied during the 12 months to September 2010. More recently, we’ve been able to maintain our absolute energy use at Sept. 2010 levels and are now engaged in our next round of reductions, with an aim to reduce emissions by 25% by Sept. 2018, on an intensity basis with a Sept. 2008/09 base year.

Encouraging Change

We are working with others in the property sector to address environmental challenges, principally through our involvement in the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC). We are a founding member of the UKGBC, set up in 2007 with a mission to dramatically improve the sustainability of the built environment and are represented on its policy committee looking at the simplification of the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme.

Procurement

We have taken steps to ensure that the environment is a key feature of our procurement. All paper we use is 100% FSC accredited and environmentally friendly products feature prominently in our stationary consumables. We use a variety of disposal routes for our end of life IT and telecommunications equipment, all of which operate on a charitable basis. We also seek to use environmentally friendly materials in our office fit-outs.