Environmental Benchmarking

The HEFCE Key Estates Statistics (KES) now collect information from all HEIs on a number of environment-related parameters, notably energy. The project aims to increase the use of this data to make systematic comparisons between similar HEIs (beginning with the four partner organizations). The outcome will be heightened awareness of opportunities for improvement. The project will also suggest new indicators – and collect data on them - for environmental aspects which are completely or partially excluded from the current KES, e.g. transport and waste, in order to extend the scope of benchmarking in future.

Capacity Building

Environmental improvement is ultimately dependent on the commitment and ‘change skills' of people. In the case of higher education, this is mainly staff within the estates function, but also includes others in functions such as procurement. To create improvement, they must persuade senior management and colleagues of its value and feasibility. This project seeks to enhance their ability to do this by running workshops, and by providing case studies and other materials on successful environmental change initiatives within higher education.      

The first workshop, on driving environmental change in HE, was held in February and a second, on HE environmental performance benchmarking, is to be held on May 10^th at the University of Bradford.

The project outputs will be disseminated through a web site (www.heepi.org.uk), events and other means.

For further information on the project contact Adam van Winsum at a.vanwinsum@Bradford.ac.uk.