Quick Menu to Guides

• Guide: Getting Started
• EPA’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager
• Food Service Guide
• No Cost/Low Cost Guide
• Lighting Guide
• Landscaping Guide
• Water Guide
• Green Building Rating Systems
• Data Centers
• Global Green Cleaning
• Commissioning Existing Buildings
• US Government Policy Impacts and Opportunities for Facility Management
• Carbon Guide

Guide: Getting Started (.pdf)

The detailed findings in this Getting Started Guide include a step-by-step process for assessing your organization, finding your starting point, identifying initiatives, evaluating their value, and implementing, measuring and monitoring their effectiveness. Those steps include the "how-to" suggestions for:

• Taking your organization’s temperature
• Creating alignment
• Establishing your starting point
• Creating and prioritizing sustainable initiatives
• Implementing, measuring and monitoring your plan

Getting Started also includes information on making the business case for a SFM program. This includes outlining a process for the program and finding the right approach for your organization that is aligned with available time and resources.

Finally, one of the most valuable sections of this guide includes case studies of three organizations that are on the path of Sustainable Facility Management. In looking at how it’s done, we were able to solicit input from three organizations that are taking different paths, with different levels of available resources. They have shared their goals, approaches, results, and their lessons learned.

EPA’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager (.pdf)

Energy management is an integral part of the day-to-day operations of facility managers and operators of existing facilities. Rising energy costs and increasing interest in sustainability are driving us to scrutinize energy consumption in our buildings and develop strategies for better management.

Successful energy management starts with understanding the units of energy and power, and becoming comfortable with the terminology. This guide will highlight essential terms and why they are important. In addition to knowing terminology, we need to understand what our monthly and annual energy consumption is in our buildings and how it is changing over time. Do you know how efficient your building is? How does your overall efficiency compare to buildings in your portfolio? Or, how does it compare to other similar buildings regionally, nationwide or internationally? This Guide will help answer these questions as the authors walk you through the online tool from the Environmental Protection Agency, the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager.

Food Service Guide (.pdf)

Food service management is one of many activities in commercial and institutional buildings. Often a very complex work environment, the decisions and practices in food service can have a significant influence on the social well-being, environmental health and economic security of both surrounding communities and those around the world.

This guide provides practical, real-world guidance on how to introduce and advance sustainable practices within the food service environment. The guide provides direction for individuals in leadership and management positions within the food service environment, as well as general information for professionals within the operation and management of buildings, including real estate management, property developers, architects, engineers and government entities. Students in facility management degree programs will also find the guide relevant.

No Cost/Low Cost Guide (.pdf)

This No-Cost/Low-Cost Energy Savings guide is principally derived from the BetterBricks article Common Opportunities: The Top Four, which can be found at BetterBricks.com, under Building Operations. The goal of the guide is to provide facility operations personnel with a practical document that will provide the resources to initiate no-cost/low-cost energy-efficiency measures at their sites. This is not a theoretical piece, but aims to present specific maintenance targets in a “here’s where to go, here’s what to look for” format. The Web site articles from which this guide was derived have several bullet lists that can be translated to spreadsheet templates and used as checklists for facilities managers to reference.

Lighting Guide (.pdf)

This guide has been written to explain the benefits of investigating and upgrading lighting systems in and around facilities.Based on extensive research, input from lighting specialists and general experience, it provides a broad description of options available to facility professionals to enhance the indoor quality of buildings while saving energy, dollars and manpower to maintain proper lighting.

Landscaping Guide (.pdf)

Landscaping provides many benefits to a facility. Some of the benefits include shading of surrounding buildings, areas for recreation and aesthetic appeal to help make a good first impression of the facility. Sustainable landscaping provides these benefits while balancing environmental, economic and social needs of the facility. The goal of this guide is to help facility managers, and those who work with facility managers, to better understand what sustainable landscaping is and how to apply sustainable landscaping practices.

Water Guide (.pdf)

Water is a finite resource; it is not possible to produce more water than what already exists on Earth. Add to that the fact that demand for water is ever increasing.

This guide is designed to review the basics of water use and disposal in commercial buildings. By learning about the fundamentals of water conservation, readers will hopefully be able to implement projects that will help lower water consumption
and thus lower water bills, as well as sewer bills that are affected by the amount of discharge. In the process, the impact of water consumption on the world in which we live will be reduced.

Green Building Rating Systems (.pdf)

This sustainability “How-To Guide” will explore the topic of green building rating systems and discuss their attributes, utilization on a global basis and benefits to facility management. It will provide the readers with:

• An overall understanding of the different rating systems available
• Costs involved in each of the highlighted systems
• Insights from facility management experts about how and why a particular rating or certification was achieved for a specific building

The intent of the guide is to provide the reader with realistic data, including costs and benefits of the systems, allowing the reader to make educated sustainability decisions. Each system has its own merits and the authors have tried not to influence or direct the readers toward any particular rating system.

Data Centers (.pdf)

Studies have shown that a dramatic reduction of energy consumption in data centers can result from low-cost measures that can be applied immediately. To help achieve a successfully executed effort to green a data center, this How-To Guide provides guidance to facility managers and other site infrastructure personnel seeking to reduce data center energy costs by making existing facilities more energy efficient.

Global Green Cleaning (.pdf)

This guide integrates cleaning operations that are found outside of North America – hence "Global Green Cleaning." The authors chose to develop this guide using the spectrum approach, thus providing readers with a range of green cleaning options. Through this approach, the authors provide information about each of the building blocks of a cleaning structure, ranging from the most basic to the most robust and comprehensive.

Commissioning Existing Buildings (.pdf)

"Commissioning Existing Buildings" is the latest in the"Sustainability ‘How-to’ Guide Series" distributed by the IFMA Foundation. The guide provides practical, real-world guidance – backed by quantifiable research – for building owners and facility managers on how to introduce and advance sustainable practices within existing structures.

"Commissioning Existing Buildings" covers:

• The Purpose of Commissioning an Existing Building
• The Process for Commissioning Existing Buildings from Start to Finish
• Budget Guidelines for Time, Money and Resources
• Real-World Case Studies

US Government Policy Impacts and Opportunities for Facility Management (.pdf)

Companies of all sizes are striving to reduce any negative impact that their businesses are having on the environment through improved sustainable practices and more efficient source reduction initiatives. They are looking to their facility managers to be leaders and manage the planning and implementation of complete sustainability programs that are consistent with corporate strategic plans; meet and exceed applicable laws and regulatory acts; and demonstrate to employees, customers and the communities within which they operate that they are exemplary environmental stewards.

This "How-to" guide is written for facility managers who are pursuing a comprehensive approach to making sustainability improvements to the properties under their responsibility. In particular, the guide is written for United States facility professionals who want to develop and then implement a strategic sustainability performance plan for their facilities while benefiting from the best-in-class tools, resources, benchmark information and support developed by the US federal government and state governments.

Carbon Footprint Guide (.pdf)

Carbon has become the currency of the sustainability movement, impacting energy management, waste handling, air quality, environmental stewardship and a host of other sustainability issues. Because energy usage is usually the largest portion of a building's operational cost, the drive to make buildings more energy efficient directly aligns with the desire to reduce the carbon footprint.

As stewards of the built environment, facility managers are in a unique position to measure, monitor and reduce building- and workplace-related carbon emissions. "Carbon Footprint" provides facility professionals with the tools they need to understand the carbon footprinting process, analyze their results and plan for the future of their organizations.

The guide was written by Sharon Jaye, D.Ed., CAPM, SFP™, assistant director of facilities at The Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Ga. She has a bachelor's degree in business administration from Clayton State University, a master's degree in project management from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville and a doctorate of education in educational leadership from Argosy University.