ESTATE PLANNING
How the six-facet survey can support Net Zero goals
Brook Smith, Partner at independent property consultants, RLB, discusses six-facet surveys’ key part in supporting healthcare estates and facilities management personnel meet their sustainability targets, and work towards the objectives and targets in their Green Plans.
A longer-term solution to meet the needs of Estates departments is an Enterprise Asset Management system that can be used to track and manage assets throughout their lifecycle.
The landscape of hospital estates has changed dramatically over the last decade. Where key drivers for those managing hospitals and healthcare settings used to be predominantly user experience, cost, and efficiency, there are now many other essential elements to the mix, including the Net Zero carbon (NZC) agenda, and how the estate and its surroundings integrate into the communities which they serve. Many healthcare Estates and Facilities Departments are now dealing with the triptych of an ageing estate, little, if any budget, and increasing pressure from stakeholders to maintain and improve. Understanding the condition of your estate is the key to unlock how best to strategically plan both refurbishment and new-build projects, and data is the gold dust that helps this understanding.
Facilitating strategic masterplanning I have written in detail before about how six-facet surveys are now more than just a tick box, but rather can provide the data to facilitate strategic masterplanning, support Outline Business Cases (OBCs) and Full Business Cases (FBCs), and, ultimately, the funding for estate management. However, six-facet surveys also have a role to play in helping Estates and Facilities management personnel meet their sustainability targets, and work towards their Green Plans, with the physical condition of buildings and estate, compliance, and Net Zero carbon goals, all intrinsically linked to ensure that effective capital planning and potential funding streams are available. There are two key NHS Net Zero targets:
n Direct emissions (the NHS Carbon Footprint): Net Zero by 2040, with an
ambition to reach an 80% reduction by 2028 to 2032, and
n Indirect emissions (our NHS Carbon Footprint Plus): Net Zero by 2045, with an ambition to reach an 80% reduction by 2036 to 2039.
Carbon emissions are not captured traditionally during a six-facet survey, but a methodology can be developed to incorporate this.
Act now All NHS Trusts will need to identify routes towards Net Zero, and deliver continuous improvement against their Green Plans. The best approach is to address the challenge sooner rather than later, with the 80% reduction now only 5 years away. As a healthcare organisation, your approach to sustainability should recognise the link between built assets, operational impact, and your corporate responsibility, and a six-facet property appraisal can help guide this. In my experience, early engagement is key, and defining sustainability services which encompass the whole estate lifecycle is essential to transformation. This approach can mean that you build in a sustainability flavour to your six-facet survey data collection over and above that of the environmental management facet, to think beyond backlog maintenance, and maximise your outputs to serve multiple agendas, saving time and money in the process. A traditional approach to developing
strategies to reduce carbon can be broken down into four key stages: n Building area, age, construction form, and condition – This data can be brought
June 2023 Health Estate Journal 37
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
