26. 03. 2019

Stefan de Goeij: On Sustainability, Smart Buildings and Energy Efficiency

Interview with Stefan de Goeij, CTP's Head of Property Management.

Stefan, you are in charge of BREEAM certification of our buildings. Which buildings were certified BREEAM during 2018 and why is that important for our clients?

We certified eight buildings under the BREEAM-in-Use scheme in the Czech Republic and four for construction in Hungary and Romania. The reason we certify existing buildings is to understand their performance. Most important is utility consumption, connections to smart lighting systems, and improvement of HVAC systems. These play a role in lowering the utility consumption or our buildings, but also in improving the wellbeing of employees working in our premises. We have approximately 70,000 people working in our buildings across all our parks in CEE, so we have a big responsibility to them and our clients to ensure excellent working conditions. Achieving BREEAM certification assures our clients that our premises are up to the highest standards.

 

What specifically does CTP do to help clients reduce energy costs? What are some of the cost savings our clients can expect when compared to an older building and when compared to a new building built by our competitors?

In general, CTP does not sell the properties we build. We need to build sustainable buildings with quality materials to ensure they last a long time. Investing up front in high-quality thermal insulation and top-quality HVAC systems ensures lower maintenance costs in the years to come. High-quality assets also allow you to make clear maintenance plans. It also helps to achieve our main goal, which is the wellbeing of people in our parks—they can work in a modern workplace, in an area with lots of greenery, water features etc.

 

Smart Buildings are now the “thing.” Can you explain your efforts on and investments into building managements systems, new technologies and why we are doing this?

In terms of creating “Smart-tech” buildings with property technology, we are upgrading our standing portfolio with technologies for data gathering. Currently we are running a pilot project in one of our buildings in the Czech Republic: it’s an eight-year-old building, built with the top technology available at the time. We are trying to understand how we can improve the current technology with new software and hardware, and gathering data and analyzing it to see what, where, and when the building is consuming, and determining what we can change in order to make it more efficient.

For example: with data analysis, we have been able to save our tenants money by discovering out that he is purchasing more reserved electricity capacity than he actually needs. Or the other example: during Christmas time—time when nobody was at the facility—we found out that the offices were still consuming a large amount of electricity. This was caused by computer servers and the cooling needed for these servers. So we came up with the idea of pumping in naturally cool air from the outside to cool the servers. These ‘small’ things can save tens of thousands of Euros a year. And the list goes on: lighting management can be set up correctly, we can change the door systems in the areas where we space heating is required, etc.

Data collection is key to understand where the utility consumption is the greatest and to search for improvements, so data analysis is the most important. We plan to start rolling out this proof-of-concept very fast in other older buildings in all the countries where we operate. With more buildings we will also be able to benchmark, and therefore to offer additional value from the data to help our customers save costs.

 

In January, we announced ISO certification of our Romanian portfolio. Why we do this and what it means for CTP?

Yes, now all our buildings in Romania have ISO 14001 (environmental management) and 50001 (energy management) certification.

The advantage of having these certifications is that throughout the group we are working same way. It also confirms that we are an environmentally friendly company. It is a strong confirmation to our tenants.

We will continue to implement high standards in our processes throughout the group portfolio, and therefore we will implement the ISO certification in the coming years in all countries where we operate the CTPark Network.

 

 

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