Clifford Chance

Sustainability is important for our clients and our people, so we embrace systems and initiatives that support better use of energy resources and reduce CO2 emissions. One way we are doing this is by considering sustainability as part of the process when identifying buildings for new offices.

When the leases were running out on our offices Singapore, Sydney and Perth, we established a project called Nest to find suitable alternatives and worked alongside specialist consultants to ensure that each facility was as sustainable as possible.

"Sustainability was one of the main criteria in Australia, and we only looked at buildings in Sydney and Perth that had a National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS) five-star rating or above," says Helen Kippax, General Manager, Australia. "These are exacting standards that the building has to adhere to around water quality, recycling, access to green energy, acoustics, waste and the materials used in the building."

Among the environmental features of the new offices in Australia will be water usage monitoring, more recycling points and sustainably sourced fit-out materials. The Sydney office will be powered by green energy, while both buildings will use an online booking system to make desk usage more efficient and reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions.

This is a feature of the Singapore office too, where the project team decided to refurbish the existing office space on a single floor, which will reduce the overall footprint.

"We followed a similar procedure to the offices in Australia where possible," says Vanita Fulford-Brown, General Manager, Singapore. "That means we've been asking suppliers the same questions about sustainability and have sourced a lot of the fittings and panels from recycled materials as a result."

"Small steps collectively add up to reducing our overall impact on the environment. For instance, a barista coffee station will cut single-use coffee cups usage, which was specified in Sydney and Perth too. It's a three-office project, so we used the same sustainability consultants, which helped create a coherent and consistent approach."

Shared experience has not stopped there either. The Project Nest team has been in touch with colleagues in the US, Dubai, London and Amsterdam, who are all at different stages of office space procurement conversations.

"It's less about being prescriptive and more about alerting people to things to consider," says Helen Kippax. "The idea is to share our experiences with the wider firm so we can ensure future office moves and the buildings we occupy are as sustainable as possible."