By Marcos Bish, Managing Director
We are very proud to announce that we have been awarded the Gold LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance (LEED EBOM) certification for the ongoing operations and maintenance of our headquarters.
The LEED EBOM certification identifies and rewards current best practices and provides a framework for buildings to use less energy, water and natural resources; improve the indoor environment; and uncover operating inefficiencies. The certification requires implementation of policies such as the sustainable purchasing of materials, equipment and consumables, and the extensive monitoring and tracking of operations.
To be the only company in our industry according to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) among a total of eleven companies in the UAE is a huge achievement. We would like to thank both our team and our green partner Green Technologies for their continued support in helping us to lead a ‘greener’ lifestyle.
For us, achieving the LEED EBOM certification was the next step on our ongoing CSR journey. As a company that walks the talk, placing our clients, partners and the business community at the forefront of our operations; the next step for the team in achieving sustainability excellence was to go beyond our Gold LEED certification for interiors and develop an ever-evolving sustainable framework for the premises, its operations and maintenance.
Specifically, we created a number of policies to document the organisation’s operational procedures detailing everything from operating hours to waste management. We were then able to track and monitor our activities inline with the policies, and implement measures that would enable us to further reduce energy and water consumption, or manage business operations in a more environmentally friendly manner. Targets were set in accordance with the LEED EBOM certification system, helping to further embed sustainability into our internal processes.
In addition to improving the operational activities across the business, LEED EBOM also recognises the value of human capital and considers the importance of employee wellbeing as a critical success factor to achieving excellence in sustainability. At Summertown Interiors, we have witnessed how the implementation of LEED EBOM has resulted in greater employee satisfaction and encouraged productivity by keeping staff more motivated and committed to the business – this has positively contributed to our company’s bottom line.
CSR is an ongoing process and we believe that our LEED EBOM framework will be a vital tool to further progress our efforts in achieving carbon neutrality by 2020. Next step will be to embed these policies and procedures into our ISO processes to ensure we strive to continuously improve on our carbon footprint measurement in our bid to become carbon neutral by 2020.
