Tech, Partnerships And Certifications: How Property Managers Are Ushering In New Sustainability Regulations

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It’s a new year, and building owners are under more pressure to make their properties more sustainable. This pressure is coming from renters, who have begun factoring environmentally friendly features into their renting decisions, and from the federal and local governments as more cities enact regulations to force buildings to reduce carbon emissions. 

Owners will need to rely on property managers to help implement sustainable amenities and practices and, perhaps most importantly, track them to prove compliance. 

“We’ve been working within the Energy Star Portfolio Manager and with the local utilities to report our energy usage for all of our buildings,” said Jesse Anderson, director of systems and sustainability at Seattle-based real estate management and consulting firm Blanton Turner. “That’s been one of the simpler ways that we have been working to comply with both state and city sustainability regulations, but we’ve also been doing much more.”

Anderson walked Bisnow through how he is helping the buildings in Blanton Turner’s portfolio comply with the changing sustainability regulations in their areas. 

For the past seven years, these buildings have complied with the Seattle Building Tune-Up policy, which optimizes energy and water performance by identifying low- or no-cost actions related to building operations and maintenance that could reduce usage, he said. 

“The city asked us to show that we brought in a third party to take a look at our building systems and make sure that everything is operating as intended,” he said. “Then, they provided a series of recommendations of what we should correct.” 

Now, as that program comes to a close, Anderson is focused on helping buildings comply with Washington’s Clean Buildings Performance Standard, which requires buildings of 50K SF or more to hit specific energy use targets. 

This has forced his team to take a closer look at their operations and maintenance manuals and to implement new energy management plans. He said he has been working closely with the buildings’ HVAC contractors, all of whom have the qualifications required to submit their numbers to the city. The team has also been morphing preventive maintenance contracts into ongoing, hands-on partnerships that involve regularly checking energy performance and capital expense project planning. 

Using Tech To Track Data

City and state regulators pull their benchmarking requirements directly from Blanton Turner’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager, Anderson said. He added that while this program handles a significant amount of the data for the company, allowing it to avoid manual entry, it also supplements with the ESG platform Measurabl. 

“Many of these programs have five-year intervals for submission and compliance, and a lot can happen in five years,” he said. “​​Ensuring you’ve got everything in a centralized location to help you track has been really beneficial.” 

Anderson also utilizes Clockworks Analytics, an automated building analytics software platform. He said it provides even deeper analytics to show when equipment is not working optimally and how much it would impact its energy performance and bottom line to delay repair and maintenance. 

“Our opportunistic goal is to use this software to eventually get away from traditional preventive maintenance contracts — where someone just comes quarterly — and get to a more on-demand preventive maintenance schedule where we can get the repairs quickly as needed,” Anderson said. 

Investing In EV Charging Stations

While residents want many sustainable amenities, including energy-efficient appliances and green spaces, electric vehicle charging stations top the list. A J.D. Power survey found that 83% of EV owners prefer home charging, but many multifamily buildings lack a sufficient number of charging stations to meet the demand. 

To combat this, Anderson said his team is installing 87 new charging stations across six buildings in its portfolio, which it was able to do thanks in part to grant opportunities provided by the Washington State Department of Commerce.

“This is essentially $700K in capital costs, and the majority of that is going into the actual expansion of electrical infrastructure in those buildings so that we have capacity for the stations,” he said. “These are pretty big projects, but we’re still hoping we can get some more onto the docket for this year.” 

Pursuing Certifications

Looking ahead, Anderson said smart buildings with interactive grid and demand response management systems — which communicate with connected devices, smart appliances and building management systems to adjust electricity usage based on demand — will play a major role in building a more sustainable future as providers look for more ways to offset energy demands. He also said smart building systems will be key to providing the advanced analytics owners need to see how their properties are using energy. 

Finally, he said developers often ask him if green certifications, such as LEED and the IREM Certified Sustainable Property certifications, are worth it as more city regulations catch up to the benchmarks required to achieve them.

“I always say it’s worth it,” Anderson said. “We still get a lot of lenders that are looking to see that you have some sort of green certification on your building. So, I don’t really foresee that going away in the future, even as our energy codes catch up.”

This article was produced in collaboration between Studio B and IREM. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

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