BREEAM In Use Portfolio Management

Envision benchmarked 40 care home buildings using BREEAM In Use (BIU) on behalf of Octopus Real Estate. The analysis and formal certification has helped Octopus to understand the sustainability performance of its care home portfolio and has supported ESG disclosure to investors regarding the fund’s assets.

The BREEAM In Use method provides a comprehensive system for appraising ‘asset’ and ‘management’ performance. Unlike other methodologies, such as BREEAM New construction and Home Quality Mark, BREEAM In Use requires certificates to be maintained and kept up to date. This way BREEAM In Use keeps asset owners and occupiers engaged with the sustainability performance of the asset, encouraging improvements to be made to increase scoring year on year.

Embarking on a programme of benchmarking asset performance across a UK wide portfolio requires that a systematic approach is adopted to ensure consistent application of standards and meaningful results. Envision developed approaches to ensure that care homes could be surveyed quickly and efficiently, using cloud based software to record and report against each homes attributes.

The benchmarking included sustainability and energy investment audits, undertaken by chartered building services engineers, which are able to explore the potential for upgrades to plant and building systems. These upgrades are appraised based on life cycle costing analysis and help to prioritise potential measures to help the fund reach its ESG targets, avoid asset stranding, and increase BREEAM scoring through future re-assessment.

For large portfolios, the maintenance of a large number of certificates can become burdensome. The obligation to re-measure can be streamlined however, whereby a portfolio management approach is agreed between the client and Building Research Establishment who administer the BIU platform. This can reduce the volume of re-certification required by spot checking a selection of assets, rather than each and every one. Envision helped to agree a portfolio management approach to streamline the BREEAM In Use process.