Sustainability Assessment of Buildings and Corporate Real Estate Management: The Risk Management Perspective

Sustainability assessments of buildings are well known to result in certificates, which are mainly used for marketing purposes. This conference contribution does not tackle the marketing perspective but focuses on the sustainability assessment of buildings as a risk management tool for corporate real estate management. Buildings have a long life span, and it is important to ensure a stable performance of the property during several decades. Regarding market demand, the building location is undoubtedly a very high ranked criterion when it comes to making the decision to buy or rent a building or building unit or not. Nevertheless, building specific quality characteristics such as energy efficiency characteristics related with the building envelope and the HVAC system, characteristics related with the indoor air quality, and quality characteristics from the facility management perspective to reduce running cost have been gaining in importance, due to the following exemplary reasons: (1) Energy: Even if clients seldom demand for energy efficiency, this topic is definitely on the rise due the legal framework conditions such as the EPBD (Energy Performance of Buildings Directive) and the EED (Energy Efficiency Directive); if a building is not fit to be able to comply with the requirements to come, upgrading might be more expensive than taking energy efficiency into account from the beginning. (2) Indoor climate: Productivity depends on social aspects, but also on building related aspects such as air quality, summer and winter comfort, quality of light, and noise level; this area is more a subject of competition on the market than energy, because of the impact on people's health and productivity. (3) Materials: The type of façade and choice of materials in general has a strong influence on running costs; a wise choice results in a reduction of cleaning costs. All these aspects are finally cost-related factors, which might affect the saleability of a property. Building assessment schemes provide a full range of decision-making criteria to consider all building related aspects, which are already on the rise or might become important in the near future. However, it is the responsibility of the informed expert to decide between options. This conference contribution uses the Austrian sustainable building assessment scheme (ÖGNB – ASBC) to demonstrate the relation between building assessment criteria and risk factors.