. Meet Paul.

Paul crawled underneath patients’ beds in an infectious ward to clear a blocked stack. Without this, the ventilators would have stopped, leaving patients without life-saving equipment.

Drainage, pumps, tankers and plumbing. Find out more: www.metrorod.co.uk project stakeholders embarking on the extraordinary task of developing modules of emissions output that can be ascribed to specific facilities service operations. SFMI is working on a carbon tool for the sector which it hopes to launch later this year and deliver to the wider world in 2024.

IWFM’s head of policy Sofie Hooper says that the institute is fully behind this initiative. She describes IWFM members as being on the carbon reduction frontline, making this a particular critical project.

“Our members are critical to the decarbonisation of the built environment in the operation phase, but the lack of an industry-wide Scope 3 Framework has been a major barrier to driving down carbon emissions,” she says. “SFMI’s Scope 3 Framework tool is therefore much needed; not just to help carbon reductions, but also to show to the world, through the data collected, the importance of the operation phase and its considerable impact on climate change.’

IWFM has played a key role in supporting the tool’s development, being part of a project board that aims to ensure the tool is fit for purpose and gains industry acceptance when it is released.

When it is first published, the SFMI Scope 3 standard won’t be a fixed document, says Shah. It will change and develop as the sector matures and forms of data capture improves the robustness of data from the supply chain and customer engagement. At the moment, “we don’t have the level of data to allow for those specifics to be brought in.”

3 And Uneasy

Shah also sees the SFMI project, and the resulting standard, as complementary rather than competitive with other FM standards. “The BSI has given us the 41000 series [of FM standards] and that has hugely standardised the language we use. For me, the two of them should work together nicely. With both we are talking about the language of services provided, the optimisation of those services and how we deliver them.

The Scope 3 opportunity

90% focused on cost and efficiency. Now, it’s about risk and the reporting that quantifies it. that has significant connotations

What’s tantalising is that Scope 3 can potentially address the classic FM complaint that operational evidence is rarely included in design considerations.

Says Shah:

PROVIDERS’ PLANS

SERVICE

All of this is no small ask for a sector that continues to be challenged by issues such as a lack of skilled employees and client organisations slow to recognise what their FM operations can achieve. But the world is certainly changing. In the past, supply chain conversations have been primarily

WHERE THERE’S SCOPE THERE’S LIFE

Most facilities service providers and property management companies have announced plans to address their Scope 3 emissions. For example:

ISS has committed to reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions within scope 1 and 2 by 2030, achieving ‘full-scope’ net zero emissions by 2040.

Sodexo says that its carbon reduction plan has it on track to be carbon neutral for Scopes 1 and 2 by 2025. It has a further target to decarbonise its entire business, including a massive 90% reduction in Scope 3 emissions from its supply chain and client sites –but this ambitious objective will, it says, take until 2045 to complete.

(“It’s complex stuff.”)

CBRE says that it wants to cut emissions from the facilities and properties it manages for occupiers – the bulk of the company’s Scope 3 emissions – by 79% per sq ft by 2035. For spaces it manages for investors, it wants emissions down by two-thirds over that same time frame.

“Because a lot of emissions from FM occur downstream–type and size of equipment, how the equipment is run, etc. – they can all be managed differently to reduce operational emissions from FM. So if we can show that, say, 50% of FM emissions happen because of how the building was set up, we’ve got a conversation to be fed back at the front end of the process about how we deliver better buildings”.

For Hooper, “FMs and supply chains play a critical role in the decarbonisation pathway. They need to take proactive control of their supply chains. As FMs, we need to educate and challenge ourselves and our supply chain, and, crucially, be innovative in how we engage in the activity and formulate solutions.”

What FMs can’t do, she says, is think that they cannot effect change. “Too many may wish to sit back, saying ‘we’re tied into our contract’ – but this sector’s professionals have such a great reach, both strategically and through their day to day work, to really make the difference.

There’s a CPD aspect, too: the IWFM’s professional standards have seen the competence requirements in the area of sustainability expanded.

Increasingly it seems as if FM will be ideally placed, through its various organisational touch points, to influence and take control of overall emissions. It’s a prize the developers of the SFMI Scope 3 tool believe is well worth attaining.

Get involved: SFMI Scope 3 Scope 3 data for FM project: tinyurl.com/Fac030423-Scope3