Low Cost, No Cost Sustainable Impact
Enlisting building maintenance is one of the most critical and cost effective resources to reduce the impact of the built environment
How often does your discussion around reducing impact lead immediately towards a discussion around Capital Improvements? While I am not insinuating that sustainable investments are not an essential part of reducing your impact, it is rarely the right first step and not always a necessary step, depending on the age, condition, design, construction, and maintenance of the asset.
We are locked into the construction and design if the asset was acquired instead of developed, and the age is the age - but what about condition and maintenance. How often are we including operations and maintenance in the sustainability conversation?
LEED, BREEAM, Green Globes, Living Building, Passive House, NGBS, and many other certification schemes are excellent tools to ensure efficiency and sustainability are built into the specification of new development. However, the average length of time to complete construction of a multifamily building after obtaining authorization is 17.4 months, compared to the operational impact, which will extend into decades and perhaps even centuries.
So why is so little emphasis placed on the crucial role our maintenance teams have on the impact of our assets?
Let’s define maintenance first, which is commonly defined as any activity—such as tests, measurements, replacements, adjustments, and repairs—intended to retain or restore a functional unit in or to a specified state in which the unit can perform its required functions. Under this umbrella term, we can pull out two activities - planned and unplanned. While unplanned activities occur and require a response, the purpose of planned or preventive maintenance is to avoid the repair in the first place.
When we consider environmental impact, we are often considering the life cycle of a product. How does the product begin, how is it used, and what happens when the expected life has been used? The Ellen Macarthur Foundation looked at the impact of life cycles in the following diagram. Within this diagram, the smaller the circle, the more efficient the solution is in terms of cost, materials, and resources.
You can see from the user side that maintenance and maintenance activities represent the smallest circles and thus the most efficient and accessible solution. This is because, at its core, maintenance is about keeping the same equipment, materials, and assets in use. With rising costs of raw materials and end-of-life treatment, maintenance becomes a desirable solution that allows assets to reach their full life expectancy and reduce system failures that have the potential to impact the resident experience negatively.
While I understand it is popular to run to innovation and proptech, according to Andrew Russell & Lee Vinsel of the Washington DC Think Tank, The Maintainers, “Maintenance and repair, the building of infrastructures, the mundane labour that goes into sustaining functioning and efficient infrastructures, simply has more impact on people’s daily lives than the vast ‘majority of technological innovations.” (Source)
As Sustainability & ESG Professionals, we must leverage every potential source that can help us meet our goal of reducing the impact of our assets. Maintenance is no exception. Typically our organizations have built out inspection schedules and preventative maintenance schedules, but it is essential to review these with an eye to reducing waste, improving efficiency, and prolonging the expected life of the equipment.
I am reasonably confident that none of your maintenance teams will argue about the importance of their role. Still, I also am reasonably sure that if you evaluate how they are approaching their preventative maintenance tasks, you very likely have practices that have been incorporated that work against reducing waste and fail to extend the life of the asset.
Let’s take the toilet flush valve, for example. I will challenge you; next time you are at a property, walk into a residential unit that you have access to - remove the lid to the toilet’s tank, and take a look at the flush valve. Chances are you will see this:
The universal flush valve
Available from your local hardware store for somewhere between $5 to $20. The universal flush is designed to pretty much fit any toilet (emphasis on pretty much - but not exact), and it is $5-20 cheaper than the flush valve that is actually designed to fit your specific toilet and also not to leak. To save $5-$20, we have instead installed a valve that is not actually made to exactly fit your specific toilet and that, in just a few months, will begin to slowly leak water from the tank down the flush valve. In fact, the flush valve is a large part of why 65% of all residential water leaks originate from the toilet. Every day that a silent leak goes undetected can amount to as much as 250-300 gallons of water, which is three times the amount of water the average American uses in an entire day.
Here are some eye-opening statistics about the $5 the maintenance tech saved you by buying a cheaper universal flush valve instead of a design that is designed for your toilet and to reduce water loss:
A slow leak typically wastes 30 gallons a day, flying underneath your radar.
A medium leak typically wastes 250 gallons (around $3.00) a day.
That $5 that was saved didn’t even last a week.
The purpose of this example is NOT to beat up the maintenance technician. Likely they are doing what they were trained to do, perhaps even incentivized to do - reduce operational expense - so saving a little money on a flush valve seems like the right thing to do.
What is at issue is the training program and, ultimately, the preventative maintenance program. Often these programs place cost savings above efficiency and fail to account for the utility losses attributed to the lower cost product. First dollar-cost analysis alone will fail you nearly every time.
As a side note, this isn’t just a plumbing issue - take a look at your light bulbs; if you see incandescent or CFL bulbs, you are likely dealing with the same underlying problem.
One ally that you may be able to enlist to help is your MRO (Materials, Repair, Operations) supplier. Some companies do have programs that allow you to restrict certain purchases and even provide training on green maintenance practices. Due diligence is needed here, however, as suppliers have different levels of understanding, and you will need to vet where your supplier is. But you are probably already looking into who is in your supply chain anyway….right?
Other ways to leverage your maintenance teams to help you reach sustainability goals include coordinating their inspections to include collecting efficiency and sustainability data, such as what type of lighting is present, what refrigerants are used, and the age and condition of equipment etc.
This is also the resource needed to capture any data around refrigerant leaks. Especially if you are using work order software, you may be able to tag that software to notify you of refrigerant refills or “top-offs.” You need to track fugitive refrigerant loss for many reasons, including identifying failing equipment, calculating Scope 1 Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and compliance with potential EPA regulations.
You can help reduce the impact of the built environment by sharing this blog with your peers. Together we can impact the 39% of greenhouse gasses attributed to the built environment. It starts with awareness, and we succeed with teamwork.
Stay well!
Chris Laughman is the ThirtyNine Blog author, a blog dedicated to reducing the impact of the built environment. When not blogging, Chris is helping the real estate industry reduce energy and water impact as the Vice President of Sustainability for Conservice, the Utility Experts. Whether Multifamily, Single Family, Student Housing, Commercial, or Military, we simplify utility billing and expense management by doing it for you. Our insight into your utility consumption provides an opportunity to identify risks. Leveraging innovation and experience, we ignite solutions with real impacts and track performance to ensure the trendline stays laser-focused on the goal. At Conservice, we have developed a true bill-to-boardroom solution to help truly make a difference. We have before us a tremendous opportunity. Standing shoulder to shoulder, we will get this done. Contact me at claughman@conservice.com for more information.
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