Shrinking footprints

“Our business revenues are directly tied to winning competitive bids,” explains Elizabeth Barry, Chief Sustainability Officer of Marsh & McLennan Companies. “Over the last couple of years an increasing number of our customers are inserting into their bid packages questions that seek documentation of our company’s sustainability commitment.”

Barry’s comments reflect the growth of the green supply chain beyond manufacturing into professional services companies like Marsh & McLennan Companies which provides advice and solutions in risk, strategy and human capital.

The challenge confronting professional services companies is how to reduce an environmental footprint consisting of people in offices.
Barry explains, “Our environmental footprint consists of our associates working in office buildings, using their computers and traveling to our clients. Our sustainability challenge is how to lower our environmental impacts to enhance our bid competitiveness without impacting the ability of our talented people to do their jobs.”

This challenge confronts every commercial business. There is an estimated 12 billion sq. ft of commercial space in the United States accounting for 9 percent of total U.S. energy consumption representing $24 billion in annual costs and 19 percent of the nation’s green house gas emissions.

Here are Marsh & McLennan Companies’ best practices for growing its bid competitiveness in response to the increasing number of bids asking sustainability performance questions:

Customer alignment
“One of my most important contributions to Marsh & McLennan Companies is to help the company align with our customers’ metrics for measuring sustainability,” Barry explains.

“This entails two key activities. The first is to identify what the customers are measuring. The second is to develop metrics within our operation that align with the sustainability metrics of our customers.”

One outgrowth of this increased focus upon measuring an office’s environmental footprint is the growing use of sub-metering in commercial buildings that house multiple tenants. Marsh & McLennan Companies exemplifies this trend, “The majority of our commercial space is rented. We are actively engaged with the real estate companies we rent from to develop sub-metering that will allow us to measure our consumption of electricity, natural gas and water.” And more and more companies are also exploring questions tied to downsizing of their office space. “We recognize that one of the biggest contributors to our consumption of energy and water is our office square footage. At Marsh & McLennan Companies we continuously work to reduce the square footage of our offices without negatively impacting our ability to meet our customers’ performance expectations.”