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Sustainability

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What we are doing

OGC is uniquely placed within government to support departments deliver their sustainable procurement and operations commitments on the civil estate. In March 2008 it was announced that a Centre of Expertise in Sustainable Procurement (CESP) would be set up in OGC reporting government's new Chief Sustainability Officer.

However, OGC's work on the government estate is already helping to achieve Defra's definition of a sustainably managed estate. An estate that has:

  • Modern, resource efficient, low energy usage buildings; 
  • well conserved and managed land; 
  • efficient use of space and ways of working; and 
  • the principles of sustainable development embedded into working practices.

Here are some details of a number of initiatives already underway that will help deliver sustainable development on the government estate.

High Performing Property

The High Performing Property initiative has already put in place many of the critical tools, governance and structures to support departments in improving the management of their property assets, aligning them with business need including sustainability. 

Property Asset Management (PAM) Boards have been set up in all departments to oversee major asset management decisions, they will help ensure that sustainability is taken into account and that standards are met. In addition, PAM Plans will help ensure that sustainability is taken into account in estate strategy planning.

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Workspace Efficiency Standards

OGC is urging departments to use buildings more efficiently through the adoption of challenging workspace efficiency standards. The standards are 10 m2 per person (net internal area (nia)) for all new builds and major refurbishments and 10-12 m2 (nia) per person for other workspace improvement opportunities.

Achieving this significant efficiency in workspace utilisation, will allow a reduction in the overall size of the government estate and a related reduction in its carbon footprint.

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Electronic Property Information Mapping Service (ePIMS)

The Electronic Property Information Mapping Service (ePIMS) is government's universal property mapping system. OGC is taking forward plans to develop this as the platform for delivery of future Sustainable Development in Government surveys, enabling the collection and analysis of sustainability data at building, departmental and pan-government levels. This will significantly enhance the availability of hard-edged data for measurement against the Sustainability on the Government Estate (SOGE) targets and will offer the scope to analyse individual building sustainability performance at source taking the current SDiG department perspective to another level.

OGC will continue to develop ePIMS as a data collection and benchmarking platform with the aim of reducing reporting burdens on departments, while ensuring it has the data needed to perform an effective scrutiny and challenge role.

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Property Benchmarking Service

OGC's Property Benchmarking Service delivered through ePIMS, captures a number of key sustainability metrics at an individual building level.  Performance is analysed, benchmarked and reported against equivalent private sector buildings. A new tool "The Property Interrogator" will supplement this external analysis, providing decision makers with visibility of key performance indicators in real time across the estate. The Property Benchmarking Service is mandatory for all civil service offices over 500m2.

OGC will be exploring the opportunities for adopting industry standards of environmental data collection to ensure the effective and consistent collection of data and the proactive management of property.

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Office Estate Rationalisation and Relocation

These policies, standards and tools underpin OGC's ongoing roles in rationalising the government estate and driving the relocation of civil service posts out of London and the South East. However, these processes play an important part in achieving sustainability on the estate by reducing unused and wasted space, and through the mandatory sustainability appraisals required on all relocations.

The majority of opportunities for at lease breaks, where department's have the option of releasing leased property. However, OGC has a number of powers, programmes and tools to make the most of these opportunities and drive rationalisation. With 514 lease breaks due within the next 8 years, estate rationalisation will be one of the keys to achieving the Government's carbon reduction targets.

There are a number of case studies, available, below detailing where OGC has supported departmental rationalisation and relocation projects, and how this has resulted in reductions in the size of the government estate.

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View case studies  

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