Early days, some progress, some sticking points

Report Date

November 2019

Overview:

This project keeps developing and morphing, so it's possible the original KPIs may need to be adjusted at some point.

However, progress has recently been made by the request from Estates that we provide them with a sustainability section for their template for papers for Estates Committee. This has given a good opportunity to get sustainability considerations, and ESME use, incorporated into standard Estates processes.  

Activities:

1. SRS staff attend key project design meetings to ensure the criteria of ESME best practice guidelines are being implemented
   1. this will necessarily involve only a small handful of projects, which will be prioritised based on anticipated impact/risk
      1. Interaction with Project Managers remains poor, with a lack of responses to meeting requests. We are still receiving the long list of projects underway, and this is used to identify priority projects for engagement.
      2. Those meetings where SRS have been invited have often proved to be a poor use of time, as the Project Managers are unable/unwilling to respond to any of our requests. SRS are more often informed of what a design will be, rather than asked to actively influence the design.
2. SRS to review the content / ambition level of ESME in 2020 to ensure still fit for purpose
   1. No action taken yet - although Aisling has clarified (as much as possible) the implications of the Scot Gov "Programme for Government", which will include a phased approach to decarbonising heat from 2024, and in the same time period will investigate making all new public buildings zero carbon.
3. Design a user-friendly interface for the ESME recommendations tool
   1. Recommendations were made by the intern, Ben Hollywood, working under Jane Rooney. Unclear what is being done about this.
   2. Ben Hollywood did a little tidying up of the ESME spreadsheet 

Deliverables:

1. recommendations to project boards of sustainability measures which should be taken (where ESME is not in use)
   1. none to date
2. Reviewed and updated ESME in 2020
   1. not yet
3. 2019 ESME user interface is updated to be user-friendly
   1. not yet