Satisfaction's what you need...

Heave! Activities such as tug-o-war sit alongside Arts and Dance classes, basketball championships, chess tournaments and English classes
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Corporate Social Responsibility: we hear a lot about it, but what are you as an FM provider doing about it? This is your chance to highlight best practice within your company. fmME talks to Simone Dobson, senior FM consultant, Emrill

Sustainability has long been an important differentiator for UK-based support service and construction company Carillion, and has since been adopted by Emrill Services (part of the Carillion Group), here in the Middle East region.

Sustainability within facility management is usually only thought about in terms of green initiatives, such as energy management and recycling; but it is much more than that. Emrill Services, through the utilisation of its Sustainability Excellence Model, apply sustainability to all areas of the business to the extent that it is now part of every day working.

Emrill measures health and safety performance using the AC2E model which rates Awareness, Competence, Compliance and Excellence to generate a continuously improving health and safety culture. Target Zero is monitored in terms of the Accident Frequency Rate for reportable accidents, with the aim of eliminating them entirely. Through the ‘Don’t Walk By’ campaign Emrill encourage staff to report any potentially dangerous item or activity and can announce the completion of 10,000,000 man hours from July 2008 to April 2009 without a single major incident.

Customer retention is also key to a sustainable organisation, which is why Emrill now actively seeks feedback on performance in order to continuously improve and exceed on expectation.

Through its FM Consultancy division, Emrill is now able to have an impact on sustainable design of facilities before they are even built. Not only does this meet many corporate social responsibility objectives, but also provides for lower long-term building maintenance costs. They are currently extending this further by implementing sustainable procurement into the design and operations of their facilities, providing savings throughout the lifecycle.

An internal sustainability team meets regularly to discuss areas where Emrill can raise awareness in the public domain, promote a work/life balance (particularly in staff accommodation), contribute to the community, and make better use of resources.

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This team leads by example: if you were invited to one of their meetings you would see that wherever possible artificial lighting is kept to a minimum, as is air conditioning and presentations via laptop and projector are not allowed. Attendees car share when travelling from the same area, and conference calls are held when there is no need to meet face-to-face, as they each try to reduce their carbon footprint.

Every year there is a publicised Sustainability Week within the company, the end day of which coincides with World Environment Day.

Satisfaction’s what you need

Emrill people were actively encouraged to volunteer and support Emirates Environmental Group in various activities, such as can collection and tree planting. Staff satisfaction, and subsequent retention, is an important item on the sustainability agenda for any company, let alone a FM company where people are the product.

Emrill approaches this by providing lifestyle activities for all staff at all levels. Emrill’s staff accommodation is somewhere that people enjoy spending time when work is finished for the day, due to the range of activities provided and the standard of catering facilities we make available.