IBM
has introduced a consulting service to reduce the costs and
environmental impact associated with managing property, equipment and
business activities.
Sustainable Asset Analytics is designed to help clients manage real
estate, supplier performance, carbon data collection and analysis,
asset lifecycle maintenance, and all processes and systems used to
support these activities. The service can be applied to everything from
buildings to information technology and other office equipment to
manufacturing tools and warehouse machinery to business travel.
Property, other assets and business activities of all types can be
areas of waste and unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions. Culprits
include poor planning and maintenance, inadequate energy management,
the heating or cooling of unused space, and the inability to collect
and analyze operational information. But by creating a comprehensive
plan to manage and measure these activities and assets, clients can
reduce energy and water use, lower greenhouse gas emissions and waste,
and improve efficiency.
"Buildings alone are a source of huge waste and inefficiency,
accounting for 70 percent of all energy use and 38 percent of all
carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S.," said Rich Lechner, energy and
environment vice president for IBM. "Squeezing out that inefficiency
and cost requires new 'smarter' technologies and business analytics."
For example, by using a detailed carbon reduction strategy and
implementation plan created with IBM for travel, property, information
technology and procurement, the UK government's advisor on the English
natural environment, Natural England, has reduced CO2 emissions by 25
percent toward a goal of 50 percent by next year.
Leading UK construction and regeneration group Morgan Sindall has
engaged IBM for this offering. This engagement follows IBM's work
performing a Strategic Carbon Management assessment for Morgan
Sindall's operations.
Sustainable Asset Analytics draws on IBM's business analytics
capabilities and consulting expertise to provide strategies and
analysis for making real estate, facilities, capital projects and daily
business activities sustainable for clients in the following areas:
-- Property carbon footprinting
-- Property carbon audit;
-- Travel carbon footprinting;
-- Project-based travel tracking and analysis;
-- Workplace transformation;
-- Consolidated real-time property-related data reporting;
-- Product and service lifecycle carbon analysis;
-- Data center management
Sustainable Asset Analytics is supported by a number of key IBM offerings, services, software tools and products, including:
-- IBM Maximo Property Performance Management Solution software,
which is designed to extract and consolidate key property data from
across all of a client's real estate to help assess and manage true
total cost of ownership and environmental performance for buildings and
other tangible assets;
-- The Green Sigma(TM) consulting offering, which is based on Lean
Six Sigma methods, tools and advanced analytics to help clients measure
and reduce energy and water use, waste and greenhouse gas emissions.
After the data are collected and analyzed, the information is presented
on a dashboard that allows the client to understand where consumption
and waste are occurring;
-- Strategic Carbon Management, which uses a Component Business
Model approach to help analyze CO2 emissions and energy use in any part
of a client's business or an entire operation. This allows the client
to prioritize where to make changes that will lower environmental
impact and reduce costs.
-- IBM's strategic information management and analytics tool,
Cognos, which is being integrated with many of our offerings in the
sustainability arena: notably with both IBM Maximo and Green Sigma.
This will allow powerful, flexible, customizable queries across the
entire set of asset-related sustainability data.
