GreenWorks is dedicated to helping the environment by diverting large quantities of redundant office and educational furniture from landfill with the prime aim of ‘re-use’. As part of the London Re-use Network which is made up of local charities and not for profit organizations that work together to deliver reuse and repair services, GreenWorks collects from very large office blocks to single office suites and provides second hand quality re-use furniture to charities, community and educational groups and small business via the network.

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Balanced Score Card adds weight to environmental polices

26 August 2010

After working with facilities managers for more than 25 years I’ve been struck by the high expectations for FMs to meet many conflicting objectives simultaneously. These incongruous demands are made more difficult when FMs are not involved in their company’s strategy, despite being central to it.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the environmental field. I once worked for a FM that ran a prestigious building for a major international food brand. The brand had developed its environmental credentials to a very high standard and were pressurising the FM to do his bit in the main office. No real guidance was offered and they seemed to want everything to be ‘green’ immediately.

The eureka-moment came when we realised the business had factory targets on energy and emissions that the office could match up with. The resulting outcome was the FM talking the same language as the board and with the same measures of success. He could then focus on the bigger picture without getting drawn into the minor issues that so often belabour the management of buildings.

The concept of Balanced Score Card (BSC) enables FMs to align their targets with the overall company strategy and to plan and manage against those targets. Typically it would have four strands: customer, finance, internal processes and learning.

A well considered BSC can help translate a vision into credible goals and communicate that vision to those at the sharp end. It’s also very flexible.

A company will highlight the environmental issues that it has most impact on and where it is most closely monitored by NGOs. For example if the board of a mining company approves a policy of reducing resource consumption across the business, the FM could set up a BSC to address the same issue in his office.

Here the board becomes the customer; so what does it want? Reducing resource consumption would mean reducing the amount of new, virgin stock bought - from paper to furniture. It would mean reusing that stock internally as much as possible (double-sided printing and remodelling desks) and finally disposing of those products in the least resource intensive way (recycling the paper and reusing the furniture).

Internally staff would need training to reduce resource consumption and knowledge of the systems they’d need to put in place to measure progress. But the financial argument provides the gravitas needed to bring this policy to life.

The BSC approach can give structure in circumstances where often there doesn’t seem to be any. It also puts the FM on the top table by dealing with the strategic issues of the business.

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