Standardize your ESG reporting with a unified building management platform
The role of building systems integration
ESG reporting doesn’t exist in a vacuum – it has a myriad of influences. How the building was originally constructed plays an important role, as do any renovations over the course of its lifecycle. More important than anything, however, is how the various systems and utilities function together. At its most basic level, this is a question of communication. If systems and utilities can’t share data with one another in a consistent and reliable way, then ESG reporting becomes increasingly difficult and complicated. Add in multiple builders or vendors and different kinds of software and hardware, and ESG reporting tools quickly become a maze of inconsistent or incompatible data. ESG reporting is only as reliable as its dataset, which is why Susteco provides a real estate ecosystem with a property management platform and an established network of partners, experts, and service providers. This way, portfolio and asset managers can get a clear overview of ESG data over the short to long term to help increase overall building efficiency. The Susteco platform is standardized yet flexible enough to improve ESG reporting with nearly any major system or vendor, even if they’ve never worked or integrated with Susteco before.
Maintaining ESG requirements for real estate investments
Over time, better efficiency can increase ROI from the short to mid term, while ensuring a real estate investment continues to meet ESG requirements well into the future. But the benefits are only maximized when the stakeholders involved follow the same basic ESG reporting strategy. This is one of the biggest challenges for the real estate and building industry. As a whole, the industry is known for being slow to pivot, particularly towards digital transformation and ESG topics. Unfortunately, there is a general lack of understanding and expertise on how to approach ESG reporting as an ongoing process. The multiple stakeholders involved in building and maintaining a real estate investment often don’t have an ESG certification, in part because so few certifications exist. Any common practices for ESG reporting usually only apply to one specific system or utility, such as HVAC or water usage. This creates unnecessary silos of information, which makes identifying dependencies very difficult. In general, there usually isn’t a holistic overview of how a building or group of buildings function in terms of ESG, which is where Susteco comes in.
Standardizing ESG data for multiple systems and utilities
From the technical side to strategic planning, the Susteco platform and network has been built from the ground up to address and simplify ESG reporting by standardizing data flow between the various systems and utilities. The initial framework for an ESG strategy is basically baked in from the start. And our network of partners and vendors can provide the ongoing consulting needed to maintain an ideal ESG reporting strategy. On its own, the traditional construction and building management industry would probably need years just to understand what some of these requirements even mean, let alone implement new and flexible processes to meet the ever-changing demands. This is often because legacy reporting practices are still built on workflows that haven’t changed in years, perhaps decades. Imagine an Excel spreadsheet with data entered manually by hand, for each system or utility, by multiple vendors, service providers, or internal stakeholders. On top of the risk of human error, data privacy and security issues can be pervasive with antiquated methods of data entry and management, not to mention how the data is stored, duplicated, or delivered. There are simply just too many ways that things can go wrong with outdated data practices.
Simplifying ESG decisions, processes, and workflows
Susteco provides a unified data standard for nearly any major system or utility. This not only standardizes the ESG reporting for stakeholders and service providers who have automated data experience: with the centralized Susteco platform, even vendors or decision makers with little to no experience working with data can access an overview of the current and/or previous ESG performance metrics for a building or group of buildings, without ever having to step foot on the property itself. This greatly speeds up the process of identifying and implementing practical improvements to building efficiency, from planning and creating offers, to repairing or replacing low-performing systems or utilities. Otherwise, it can take weeks, months, or in extreme cases years before the various parties involved in a large-scale investment property can collaborate on how to approach ESG reporting or improve efficiency by monitoring KPIs. Susteco provides transparent, data-driven decision making to sidestep some of the pitfalls of traditional construction planning and building management and reduce overall complexity for portfolio and asset managers. In essence, the success of a real estate investment boils down to a series of decisions – and the better each individual decision is, the better the investment becomes.
Establishing an ESG vision and reporting strategy
As with any type of progress or innovation, the main question is when and how to start. In an industry like construction and real estate, this question isn’t always easy to answer, especially without proper knowledge of ESG topics. Even asking the question can be a struggle for many legacy companies and service providers. But it doesn’t have to be. This is why Bosch chose to establish Susteco as a fully funded corporate start up, in particular to help an aging industry adapt to modern times. As quickly as Susteco adjusts course based on market demands and customer needs, however, it is still based in a storied tradition of long-term success. With a global network spanning from Bosch, Susteco is uniquely positioned to consult and deliver results from daily-business decisions to long-term strategy. But it is this very type of unilateral collaboration that’s necessary for our industry as a whole to overcome systematic, global challenges like climate change. And with the right tools, modern ESG reporting is a crucial first step for us all.
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