Integrated facilities management (FM) provider, Emrill, has implemented several targeted strategies and innovations to intensify efforts to provide sustainable FM solutions to its clients and support the UAE’s vision to create a more sustainable environment. The organisation has launched ‘Together for Sustainability’ — a holistic approach to reducing the environmental impact of Emrill’s operations through targeted sustainability programmes. ’Together for Sustainability’ also promises to improve efficiencies for clients, enhance overall performance of buildings and facilities within the built environment, and encourage Emrill’s employees to strengthen their dedication to sustainable practices.
As part of Emrill’s latest initiative, the organisation has introduced an advanced Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) platform to track, analyse, and consolidate environmental, energy, water, waste, social and Greenhouse gases (GHG) data utilising a centralised system. Using the latest industry standards, methodologies, and conversion factors, Emrill’s ESG platform will improve decision-making through focused insights measured by data-based indicators, allowing the organisation to enhance strategies, benchmark performance, and communicate more effectively with clients and key stakeholders. Using data output from the ESG platform, Emrill will recommend actions and improvements that will enable its clients to enhance the overall sustainability of projects.
The organisation has implemented energy conservation solutions across multiple client sites to increase energy and water savings, including solar flood lights and power banks, solar-powered portable appliance charging stations and mist fans, a solar-supported hot-water calorifier system, waterless cleaning systems, irrigation pump panel timer installations and optimised chilled water systems and networks. In residential communities, Emrill has replaced halogen lights with LED lights, resulting in an 80 per cent energy reduction and significant cost savings to clients. By switching to water aerators, Emrill has reduced water consumption by 50 per cent for its clients, further demonstrating the organisation’s commitment to providing more sustainable and cost-effective solutions.
David Nice, Emrill’s associate director, commented on the organisation’s ongoing dedication to sustainable practices: “Emrill has always understood the importance of identifying and implementing strategies that aid in the UAE’s efforts to create a more sustainable future. We believe sustainability should start at the source and we restructured our Integrated Management System (IMS) team to enhance its focus on developing and executing sustainability initiatives. Our Health, Safety, Environment and Quality (HSEQ) team is now our Health, Safety, Sustainability, Environment and Quality (HSSEQ) team. Under its new moniker, this team has further enabled Emrill to succeed in our sustainability journey and help us lead the way in encouraging a more maintainable, sufficient, environmentally-aware FM landscape.
“We believe in the power to create change from across every level of our organisation and emphasise the importance of our 9,500 plus team engaging in sustainable practices each and every day.”
In Emrill’s latest sustainability survey, 69.23 per cent of employees strongly agreed the organisation is a leader in sustainable practices in the region’s FM industry. Emrill’s internal sustainability initiatives, including ‘Sustainability Week’, focus on increasing employees’ daily sustainability efforts and have resulted in 88.46 per cent of employees more efficiently managing their own energy and water consumption.
Emrill has also introduced ‘Sustainability Champions’ across its contracts to strengthen the organisation’s sustainability efforts and initiatives on-site across its contracts. The champions actively promote sustainability at each location through the distribution of resources and information, report progress and provide feedback on current strategies to identify any areas for improvement.
Emrill’s operations director, Gopalakrishnan, attributes the success of the organisation’s sustainability efforts to its dedication to providing innovative technologies as well as employee empowerment initiatives to place sustainability at the forefront. He said: “Our sustainability solutions resulted in over 4 million kWh of energy savings and 16 million litres of water savings across our contracts last year. Emrill will always focus on providing the most viable and sustainability-focused solutions for every client, and with our innovative ESG platform, we are now in the position to set higher sustainability targets, track our progress and measure our performance across several metrics and industry parameters to continue to go above and beyond in our strive for sustainability.
“Through our greenhouse project and farming of organic vegetable gardens at project sites, Emrill is focusing on a greener future for our region with the involvement of communities. Together with our stakeholders and employees, we can create ecological environments that nurture the region’s built environment in sustainable ways. We will continue to place integral importance on encouraging our team through our in-house practices with key sustainability focused-events, including World Environment Day, Earth Hour, beach clean-up drives, Dubai Can campaign, and Sustainability Week. Our sustainability journey is one that will continue to grow and support the UAE in its ongoing efforts for a sustainable future.”
Emrill has recently launched its first sustainable cleaning robot for a retail environment, added more battery-operated cleaning machines to its equipment fleet, and introduced smart washrooms and remote monitoring to aid in its sustainability practices. The organisation was awarded the Dubai Chamber of Commerce CSR Label for the 11th consecutive year, demonstrating the organisation’s mission to deliver service excellence through responsible and sustainable business practices.