Australian property professionals now have their own manual for reporting on corporate responsibility performance. A Guide to Corporate Responsibility Reporting in the Property Sector was recently launched by Senator Nick Sherry in Canberra.
Senator Sherry, who has recently been promoted from Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law to Assistant Treasurer, commended the property industry for its leadership.
He noted the Australian Government had donated $2 million to the St James Ethics Centre, which will become a local hub for the Global Reporting Initiative, which he described as the “gold standard for reporting on sustainability”, and UN Global Compact activities.
Australian property companies are recognised as world leaders in the field of corporate responsibility reporting. However, many property firms, small and large, find transparent reporting on social, environmental and economic practices a mind boggling exercise.
That’s where the Property Council’s new guide comes in. It provides a voluntary template for corporate responsibility reporting that can be customised to the needs of individual corporations. The guide aims to:
1. Provide a simple, entry level reporting template for property companies
2. Standardise the metrics that property companies use to report corporate responsibility
3. Assist with crucial scoping issues, such as determining materiality in the property sector.
The Property Council guide:
1. Defines corporate responsibility
2. Sets out a conceptual framework for corporate responsibility reporting
3. Identifies the touchstones of a robust reporting framework
4. Relates the template to international reporting schemes
5. Explores the concept of materiality and its implications for reporting
6. Outlines basic reporting metrics.
Corporate responsibility reporting can be confusing for beginners and experts. A study of 10 leading property companies found their reports utilised numerous different metrics. In fact, these companies employed more than 360 metrics to report on a handful of common categories – more than 50 different reporting metrics were used for waste alone.
The Property Council’s National Sustainability Roundtable set to work to develop a core set of metrics relevant to myriad property activities.
Drawing on the best international thinking, including the Global Reporting Initiative’s G3 standard, the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, FTSE4Good and various United Nation’s financial initiatives, the National Sustainability Roundtable fashioned a set of core metrics for different property players.
Consequently, A Guide to Corporate Responsibility Reporting in the Property Sector can be applied by building owners, fund managers, facility managers, developers, construction contractors and the corporate real estate sector.
These final set of metrics fall into the following categories:
Corporate philanthropy
- Environmental Performance
Building ratings, materials, energy, water, biodiversity and land use, emissions and water
Employment, occupational health and safety, training and education, human rights, community and political donations
For instance, the key metrics for energy are:
- Energy used – absolute consumption in megajoules
- Average energy used – by sqm (divided by asset type), by gross revenue, by asset, by fuel source
- Energy saved (compared to previous year) – absolute, by sqm, by gross revenue, by asset, by fuel type.
A Guide to Corporate Responsibility Reporting in the Property Sector has been issued as a discussion paper. Stakeholders can provide feedback on any aspect of the document at www.propertyoz.com.au/cr
The National Sustainability Roundtable will monitor comments and provide its responses at regular intervals.
The Guide is also being reviewed by the Property Council’s international allies in the Real Estate Equity Securitisation Alliance. We’ve also submitted the guide to the St James Ethics Centre and to the Global Reporting Initiative.
The latter is due to commence work on a real estate sector supplement to its GRI G3 standard; however, this won’t be available for a couple of years.
The Guide is part of the Property Council’s ongoing property toolbox series.
Recent releases include our fully updated guidelines for Managing Indoor Environmental Quality and the Property Council/ARUP Existing Buildings Survival Strategies: making it happen document, produced with the assistance of Davis Langdon and Colliers International.
Please check out the bookshop for all details.
Peter Verwer |
Tuesday, 30 June 2009 12:01 AM |
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