In the past year, we’ve enrolled over a quarter of our staff in BREEAM training to upskill our knowledge of sustainable buildings and have a strong understanding of the key certification, spanning the range of our regions and specialisms.
The training comes as part of our commitment to support clients in their sustainability goals but also to improve ESG knowledge around the company. Hollis are committed to placing ESG at the forefront when thinking about all aspects of the business, whether that be our fee-earning services or our internal support teams, and educating our people has a large role to play in this. A whole company approach to sustainability, guided by our internal ESG steering committee, will ensure we all play our part in a more sustainable future for the built environment.
There are a variety of courses available through the BRE, aimed at different levels and with different objectives. Sustainability is not a one-size fits all approach, and so neither is our approach to training. Considering the levels of understanding needed to best suit our clients and our people, the courses we have chosen are the BREEAM Associate and BREEAM AP certification.
BREEAM Associate
In June 2021, we rolled out BREEAM Associate training for 100 employees. The objectives of the training include:
- Develop an in-depth understanding of BREEAM
- Support day-to-day BREEAM process
- Identify low-cost opportunities for high environmental performance
- Understand the behaviours needed to achieve cost-effective results
- Navigate BREEAM manuals
Sustainability should not solely be in the hands of our ESG consulting service team, and so we included staff from across the whole business in this introductory course to sustainable buildings. This will ensure we are supporting our clients with their ESG needs, but also encouraging employees to support us in reaching internal objectives and deepening overall understanding of sustainability within the real estate market.
BREEAM AP (Design & Site)
We also enrolled 20 employees onto the BREEAM AP training course. The objectives of this course include:
- Understand the BREEAM framework to achieve sustainability goals
- Save costs by targeting BREEAM ratings in a cost-effective way
- Offer expert advice to design teams on environmental sustainability and design
- Project manage the BREEAM assessment
We chose to enrol employees from our project management, ESG consulting and M&E service. This is an important step to upskill our people who are involved, or will be increasingly involved, in delivering ESG focused projects and advice for clients, equipping them with an advanced knowledge of sustainable buildings and achieving BREEAM certification.
Speaking of the training, Associate, Stephen Kent, shares “Undertaking the BRE training has given me the confidence to explore how we can undertake BREEAM natural light assessments as part of our ongoing future service development. As a team we are constantly looking to improve our service and with the growth of our own in house ESG service, the BREEAM training has offered me the insight to understand how as a service team we can provide additional value and expertise to our clients.”
Further bolstering our ESG consulting service offering, and company knowledge, includes our three in-house BREEAM assessors, Rodrigo Garcia, Catherine Harker and Deepshikha Mittal, who are qualified to assess a project’s compliance against relevant BREEAM criteria. With a vast range of in-house knowledge in place, we are well equipped to further support our clients on the entirety of their ESG objectives.
Alongside our clients, our people have always been a priority, and our recent investment into BREEAM training reflects our dedication to employees’ progression. We recognise the importance of career development, and the role learning at work has to do with this, and provide relevant educational training that we feel will facilitate progression. We look forward to continuing our roll out of BREEAM training moving forward, and congratulate all employees who are now BREEAM certified.
