In 2021 the D Hammond Group, comprising Darenth Valley Building Services and D Hammond, received Planet Mark accreditation, acknowledging the Group’s progress and commitment to reducing the carbon impact of its activities and encouraging others to do the same. Sustainability, and the pursuit of better ways of working, has become embedded in the business affecting how and who the Group does business with, and helping it to win work from like-minded clients.
What is Planet Mark?
Planet Mark Business Certification is a recognised symbol of sustainability progress. It demonstrates a business’ commitment to measuring and reducing their carbon emissions and achieving their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) sustainability criteria, and ultimately contributing to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). In order to retain the Planet Mark, certification holders must reduce their carbon footprint year-on-year by a minimum of 5%.
Why we chose Planet Mark
Darenth Valley Building Services holds a Royal Warrant from HM The Queen for building services and maintenance, which is renewed every three years. Sustainability is at the forefront of the renewal process, with Royal Warrant Holders asked to account for the environmental impact of their company’s activities, from single-use plastics to waste and carbon impact. The renewal process gave us the impetus to examine the sustainability of our business, and we chose Planet Mark to partner us in reducing our carbon impact because of their credibility with the Royal Warrant Holders Association.
As a company you have to go above and beyond. Planet Mark is our base level, our aspiration is to deliver more. Everyone talks about sustainability – Planet Mark helps you to actually create meaningful actions and be accountable. It’s not just ticking boxes it’s about ingraining sustainability in the business.
Paul Nixon
Financial Director, D Hammond Group
Quantifying our carbon impact
The first stage in achieving Planet Mark accreditation is measurement – capturing data on carbon impact in four key areas – waste, fleet, travel and procurement – establishing a stake in the ground for key parameters from which progress can then be measured. Finding ways to capture the data was challenging but Planet Mark helped us. In some instances we had to change the way we worked or work with suppliers to capture data, for example:
• To track the journeys employees make by public transport we now use Oyster cards rather than claiming travel on expenses
• To assist in measuring the impact of the mileage of our diesel and petrol vehicles the fuel card company now provides a monthly emissions report
Between 2019 and 2021 we gathered information to create a base level year. Ordinarily this process would not take this long but the pandemic meant that longer was required to acquire meaningful data on regular activity patterns. For example, in 2019 we used 79.7 tonnes of CO2 which reduced to 47.6 tonnes in 2020 but this was primarily because of reduced activity levels courtesy of the pandemic so not sustainable.
What we learnt from the Planet Mark audit
The initial audit revealed a lot of good practice already within the D Hammond Group, for example when we asked our skip provider We Clear Junk they were able to supply details of where our waste went and the recycling rate. We were please to find that we had no waste to landfill.
It was encouraging that we were more sustainable than we realised because of the way things are moving. We were already using and specifying LED lighting, not using plastic bags, sourcing FSC timber, recycling scaffold boards, using hoardings made out of composite old rubber tyres rather than ply. Interestingly these green alternatives were all commercially viable, so there was no financial penalty to being green and often quite the opposite.
The Planet Mark accreditation process has enabled us to formalise the capture of information necessary to track the carbon impact of the business – gas and electrical usage, the CO2 impact of our fleet of vehicles etc. – and provided a structure goal setting.
We are now armed with the right information to take positive action and measure the effect it will have. We will now make business and buying decisions with consideration to the carbon impact of the alternatives. Our biggest carbon impact is from our vehicles so one change we have made is to move our management to electric vehicles. Our Renault Zoes are cheaper to run and lease than diesel and avoid the congestion charge. They are more carbon efficient and make commercial sense. Our target is that all our managers use an electric vehicle.
Sustainability, and the pursuit of better ways of working, has become embedded in the business. Recently we have moved from leased premises to our own premises where we can implement improvements to the building to make it more carbon efficient and sustainable.
Planet Mark accreditation is a team effort
Engagement is the second requirement of Planet Mark accreditation as carbon reduction requires behavioural changes right across the business. Whilst in the D Hammond Group it is the accounts function which ‘keeps the score’, the process must be operationally driven and needs the commitment of the management team.
The pandemic had a positive effect on how people within the D Hammond Group engaged with the accreditation process. It gave them time to give consideration to better ways of working, and the shortages of some products and services post-pandemic prompted an earlier assessment of alternatives for better continuity of supply and lower carbon impact.
Planet Mark has helped us on this part of our journey, providing workshops and training to share our aspirations and expectations across the business to get everyone involved. Ultimately we will broaden engagement out to suppliers and subcontractors too.
Planet Mark has helped us to win new business
Pre Planet Mark we were already encouraging clients in the use of LED lights, sensor lights, energy-efficient boilers, the installation of vehicle charging points and bicycle racks, etc. to positively affect their carbon impact, and we will continue to expand this. While the Royal Warrant provided the instigation to capture our sustainability journey, other clients now actively ask for our sustainability information, which has become part of their overall assessment of us. We are proud to say that working to gain and maintain Planet Mark accreditation has given us auditable metrics to prove that we are becoming a more sustainable business. We have won work on the basis of our sustainability because of the weight it is now given.
Having started the Planet Mark accreditation process over three years ago has undoubtedly given us a competitive advantage during this sea change in how purchasing decisions are made.
Paul Nixon
Financial Director, D Hammond Group
What are initiatives are we working on going forward?
We are already committed to measuring and reducing our annual carbon emissions by a minimum of 5%, we have begun the process of engaging employees and stakeholders to ’unlock their talent and knowledge to drive year on year progress in sustainability’ and we are now working on the third pillar of accreditation, which is communication. We need to establish seven SMART Sustainable Development Goals, identifying areas where we can have significant influence, and which are relevant to our clients, so that we can benchmark them and communicate them to share best practice.
As a business, and a Royal Warrant holder, we continuously strive to find more sustainable ways of working and encourage our clients and suppliers to do the same. Working with Planet Mark keeps us focussed on our commitment and endorses the progress we make in carbon reduction.
James Lovell
Managing Director, D Hammond Group