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Environmental & Risk Management / Environmental Sustainability

Environmental Sustainability: Application Overview

The ARCHIBUS Environmental Sustainability application provides tasks and reports for managing the process of assessing the environmental sustainability (also know as the "green" state) of the rooms and equipment in your facilities.

With this application, you can document and evaluate how your site is meeting its environmental goals.This can help you improve the balance between people, infrastructure, facilities, and their effect on the environment. Attention to a building’s environmental factors can often lead to long-term cost savings, as well as improve the quality of the work environment

To perform an environmental sustainability assessment, you visit your locations and equipment items and ask such questions as: 

• Is this promoting good air quality?
• Is this conserving energy?
• Is this conserving natural resources?
• Does this meet government environmental regulations?
• Are waste products being disposed of properly? Are they hurting the environment?

You then analyze your results, determine problem areas, and work to improve the environmental sustainability of these problem areas.

Note: You have the option to set up a handheld device, such as a Pocket PC, that will be used by assessors in the field for recording conditions, After the assessment is complete, you can import the results back to the ARCHIBUS system. Additionally, field assessors can use a tablet PC, laptop, or using pencil and paper.

General Procedure for Environmental Sustainability

1. A business process owner sets up the necessary data for using the Environmental Sustainability Assessment application:

• develops and maintains the facility background data required for working with the application.
• creates a project for organizing condition assessment data.
• defines assessment classifications

2. An assessment manager creates assessment records for a project and prepares for a field survey. This entails:

• Creating assessment items for a project based on rooms and/or equipment items.
• Assigning to one or more inspectors the task of assessing these items.

3. Field assessors travel to each room or equipment item, note its environmental sustainability, and record it. There are a few ways to do this:

• use the ARCHIBUS Assessments mobile app to record data on a mobile device or smart phone. When field assessors sync their mobile devices, the assessment items are uploaded to the ARCHIBUS database.
• use a laptop. For information, see Using a Laptop for Field Assessments.
• use devices running the Windows XP Tablet PC operating system. For information, see Using a Tablet PC for Field Assessments.
• use paper and pencil to record observations for later entry into the system. For information, see Using Printed Forms for Field Assessments.

4. At any time in the assessment process, the assessment manager can update the assessment items.
5. (Optional) Cost estimators or assessment managers review the assessments and estimate the costs of resolving assessment items.
6. Assessment managers generate and review the following reports in order to review the environmental sustainability rating and facility condition index, which will help them prioritize the items that need addressing, Some of these reports also present estimated resolution cost (if you chose to define it in step 6).
7. Scoreboard
8. Assessment Project Statistics by Location
9. Assessment Items with Sustainability Ratings Greater than 25
10. Open Energy Issues
11. Building Sustainability Summary
7. Based on review and analysis of the assessment data, assessment managers oversee the resolution of deficiencies.

• If you do not have the On Demand Work application, you can document the planning, scheduling, and budgeting of assessment items by setting the various Status values. See Addressing Assessment Deficiencies.
• If you have the ARCHIBUS On Demand Work application, you can generate maintenance service requests to address deficiencies. See Addressing Assessment Deficiencies with Maintenance Service Requests.

8. When the issue has been resolved, assessment managers can verify the completed assessments to ensure that they have been properly addressed and closed out. They can also enter the cost of completed assessment items.
9. Complete and Verify Assessments
10. Enter the Actual Costs of Assessment Items
9. Assessment managers and other analysts can analyze the assessments and their resolutions with a series of reports:

• Operational Reports
• Management Reports
• Operational Reports (Drawings)