How Adaptability is Key Towards Managing Facilities through Climate Change

Author: James Graham, Director, Facilities Services, Cardinal Group Real Estate Services

As is often the case in a disaster, we tend to step back and take a moment after the dust settles and realize we were ill-prepared for a given situation and only then make plans to prevent it from ever happening again. Policies are most often written out of these experiences, with the benefit of hindsight at our disposal and rarely with the forethought of prevention. Natural disasters tend to shape many of these discussions, and globally, we have experienced just a taste of the climate change coming – from record-setting global temperature increases year after year, historic flooding and rainfall, to unseasonal and prolonged storms – the impact of these changes grows every year. The question we present to ourselves is how do we continue operating our communities, protecting and maintaining the assets we own and manage, in an increasingly hostile and ever-changing environment?

While slow to initially take off, evidence of the growing trend for adaptive policies related to our changing climate conditions can be found everywhere:

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” – Stephen Hawking

Our success in maintaining and operating our communities will continue to rely on our ability to adapt to and respond to changing climate conditions, with an emphasis on becoming more efficient and responsible for our greenhouse gas emissions and the protection of both our physical assets (the communities) and our team members who operate and run them.

Our ability to adapt to service and part delays caused by these changes, locally, nationally, and globally, will be a key lynchpin in our continued success as multi-family operators. Changes to address the global impact of climate change will likely fall on finding more local solutions – such as ordering products and services from domestic sources instead of those from overseas.

Maintaining our communities with a ‘preventative maintenance’ first outlook to extend efficient operations of the communities, coupled with pro-active upgrades and retrofit that follow government guidelines for reduced emissions and provide more efficient operations, will be just two of many ways we endure and adapt to the changing conditions across the country. Failing to adapt won’t be an option – government agencies and our customers (Clients) alike are recognizing now that preparing for these changes in the long term will be the only way to continue to manage, own, and operate our communities and investments in “green” efficiency and operation will not only mitigate damage and costs, but also provide value to our residents, customers, and communities.