Sustainability practices just got easier for the facility management profession as the International Facility Management Association has announced a collaborative agreement with the Alliance for Sustainable Built Environments to develop and deliver sustainability educational programs, as well as provide research and planning tools.

Since 2003, the Alliance, which includes the international companies Johnson Controls, Milliken & Company, Forbo Flooring, Philips Lighting, JohnsonDiversey and Owens Corning, has been working to educate the marketplace and top management on the benefits of reducing the overall impact facilities have on the natural environment and on building occupants.

This new partnership will bring sustainability concepts and state of the art practices to a vital division of all business organizations. Currently, more than 18,400 facility management professionals are members of IFMA, managing nearly 23 billion square feet of workspace combined.

"Fifty-nine percent of IFMA's North American members are currently implementing some sustainable practices, often without a plan, and another 17 percent plan to do so in the next two years," said David J. Brady, IFMA president and CEO. "The Alliance has become a focal point for green building practices, with the right resources and unparalleled commitment."

IFMA/Alliance programming and activities will include a number of environmental metrics, including the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) programs, Energy Star, Climate Leaders and others.

The Alliance also will take a key role in developing the first dedicated sustainability educational track at IFMA's annual World Workplace Conference and Expo Oct. 8-10 in San Diego , Calif. More than 5,000 facility management professionals are expected to attend.

"The impact of the facility management community on the environment is profound. Facility managers are critical to the adoption of more energy and environmental solutions because they are the heart and soul of building operations," said Paul von Paumgartten, director of energy and environmental affairs for Johnson Controls, and a spokesperson for the Alliance . "Facility managers collectively impact the decisions made for 4.5 million commercial, educational and community buildings, comprising more than 60 billion square feet of space. We believe that the best way to achieve high-performance, green buildings is to provide them with the resources they need and tap their commitment, expertise and experience."

The Alliance for Sustainable Built Environments is a group of industry leaders who practice and are recognized for leadership in sustainability; that is economic, social and environmental responsibility. It is committed to delivering high performance sustainable solutions for the built environment. For Alliance information, visit www.greenerfacilities.org.

Last year we published articles in FM Essentials covering diability discrimination legislation in both the UK and Hong Kong. These articles are still available on the web site and I recommend re-reading in the light of the findings below.

Each year the Equal Opportunities Council (EOC) of Hong Kong publishes a Work Review report to highlight the trends in complaints and prosecutions. This looks at the complaints received under the three aniti-discrimination ordinances - disability, sex and familiy status discrimination - and identifies trends in attitudes which have a bearing on the success rate achieve by the EOC.

In all areas the EOC will aim for concilliation rather than prosecution and their success rate in this has increased from 53% in 2003 to 61% in 2004 and 66% in 2005, a steady progressive increase.

Whilst Facility Managers as general business managers, will always need to consider sex discrimnation in the workplace, the area of most concern to us is disability discrimination. It is salutary to note that the property management field was singled out in the report as one of the main work fields contributing to the 175 dismissal cases reported during the year.

However it is in configuring our buildings to allow barrier-free access to all that the Facility Manager can play a major role. In 2004 the number of complaints made directly to the EOC conerning accessibility issues was 13. In 2005 this number increased to 54, a 3 fold increase. This shows that lack of access to premises is still a major barrier to people with disability and that people with disabilities are more prepared to stand up and say so.

As Facility Managers we should all review the needs of people seeking access to our buildings through the eyes of those less fortunate than ourselves, and seek ways to improve their environment. Our goal should be to respect their independence by ensuring they can gain access to our buildings with as little thought as we do ourselves.

These days we live by convenience - we eat convenience food, we live by the MRT station for convenient travel, we shop in huge malls for the convenience of doing everything under one roof and we want all our appliances to be there ready for us when ever we need them.

The TV is on standby so that a quick flick of the remote brings up the programme we want, the computer is on standby so that we can continue where we left off without having to restart the programs, our video recorder continually tells the date and time - unless of course we are unable to figure out how to set it!

An article in The Economist in March tells us just how bad this convenience is for the environment. Apparently a typical microwave oven consumes more electricity to power its digital clock than it does heating food - because the clock is on continuously but we only use the devise for a fraction of the time to heat food.

The same is true for many other appliances particularly televisions, DVD player, hi-fi units etc. All use power when in standby mode and this power adds up. Various studies have been carried out to estimate the amount of power consumed and these estimates are staggering. Initial estimates put the standby power usage as 5% of all residential power consumption, but later empirical studies upped this to a possible 10%. Similar studies in other developed nations such as France , the Netherlands , Australia and Japan have come up with similar figures - France 7% - and other estimates are even higher at 13%.

To put this in perspective, in America in 2004 the residential energy consumption was 1.29 billion megawatt hours. A 5% loss through unnecessary standby power equates to 64 million megawatt hours, or the equivalent of 18 typical power stations.

In part the problem lies with the manufacturers of these products. There are designs which maintain the standby function using only a single watt or less whilst the worst offenders consume 20 watts in standby mode. However there is no standard and no way for the consumer to know how much a particular product consumes when they purchase.

One of the main changes to come about in recent years is the change of power supply design form the transformer type to "switch mode" technology. These units incorporate power handling electronic components which are continuously switching on and off at high frequency to create the different power output parameters, voltage, current etc., required by today's electronic equipment. By incorporating additional circuitry the standby and no-load (plugged in but no load attached) functions can be realised with a consumption of a fraction of a watt.

To see a physical effect of this change check the weight of today's note book computer power supplies with those of a few years ago. The iron core transformer has been removed with a dramatic weight reduction. In notebooks weight reduction is a selling point to the consumer so this is clearly an area where the technology is beneficial. It is less obvious in stationary equipment so the technology may not get used as it costs more to implement. There is no incentive for the manufacturer as it is the consumer who pays for the additional electricity usage in standby mode.

Various voluntary schemes, such as the Energy Star programme , and some mandatory regulations are being brought in to force to manufacturers to comply with new standards but these will only apply to new equipment. With the thousands of items of old style equipment already sold it will be years before standby power reduction benefits demand-side energy reduction at source.

Much of this article applies to domestic appliances. So where does that leave the Facility Manager? Clearly it also applies to the thousands of desktop computers that sit in serried ranks across our office floors. How many are left on overnight or over the weekend waiting for our convenient start up when we get to work? Taking action to reduce the standby load on our computers will, like all such simple energy saving measures, have a direct effect on the bottom line and on the pollution in Hong Kong from our mainly coal-fed power stations.