FM FEATURE
BIFM AWARDS 2015: IMPACT ON SUSTAINABILITY
JAMIE HARRIS
EXHIBITING
GREEN
CREDENTIALS
THE NEC GROUP
Birmingham NEC’s facilities team, ‘Team NEC’
beat its own high targets in waste management
and has been recognised for its commitment to
new sustainability initiatives including cutting
landfill, water use, energy wastage – and costs
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NATIONAL EXHIBITION CENTRE
E
ach of my previous visits
to the National Exhibition
Centre (NEC), an events
venue and complex situated
adjacent to Birmingham
International Airport, began with
a train ride from London, and
was followed by a brisk walk
across from the train station
to one of the exhibition halls
for a day’s reporting, before I
embarked on the return journey.
From Euston Station, I never
placed a foot outdoors.
So focused are the visitors
on the exhibitions and events
the NEC holds, ably supported
by various amenities located on
site, that much of the rest of
the centre’s operations will go
unnoticed.
Last month, this behind the
scenes success was brought
to the fore as NEC’s facilities
team, ‘Team NEC’, walked away
as winners in the Impact on
Sustainability category at this
year’s BIFM Awards.
Judges said that the
NEC’s entry “provided a
compelling example of best
practice in waste management”.
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They are not wrong; the NEC
have hardly missed a beat,
setting (and beating) high targets
in a continuously evolving
environment.
The NEC is home to 140
conferences and exhibitions
each year, providing additional
challenges for the facilities team,
which must work with constantly
changing third parties on site.
In partnership
The facilities team, a partnership
between in-house staff and
service providers CBRE Norland
and OCS which is branded as
‘Team NEC’, carry out hard
and soft services, including
cleaning, waste management and
maintenance and compliance
services. The team’s size
fluctuates, depending on how
many events are currently
running across the centre, which
houses 20 inter-connecting
halls. Ninety hard services staff
(increasing to 106 full time staff
next year) are joined by the
cleaning staff team, which can
vary from 50 to 2,000 people.
Steve Cartmell, integrated
facilities services contract
manager, cleaning and waste,
began working on site 17 years
ago ‘with a broom in hand in
hall 20’. Since then, Cartmell has
worked his way up to his current
position, where he is responsible
for the delivery of cleaning and
waste services on site, as well as
working with the various events’
organisers.
“I regularly walk the floor with
our organisers and our customers
to figure out the best process for
them,” he explains.
Team NEC, while having to
“We came up with the idea [for
an on site waste pre-treatment
centre] on a post-it note”
address immediate work, such
as clearing exhibition space as
one event ends and another
begins, sometimes overnight, as
well as keeping food and retail
plazas clean for more than two
million visitors each year, has
also been a driving force for new
sustainability initiatives.
Brian Pell, group director of
operations for NEC, is grateful
to have the support of the board
through their investment into
sustainable practices.
“There is almost the
temptation to say, ‘let me paint
all of the buildings and replace
the frontage’… I’m not saying
they’re superficial, but we’ve also
been able to spend substantial
amounts on all of the things that
the customers don’t see, but will
absolutely benefit from.”
The contracts with OCS and
CBRE Norland began just over
three years ago. The tenders,
says Pell, were two years in the
making. “We wanted to make
sure that we were partnering
with the right people, who
had the right credentials. It’s
had a knock-on effect: even
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FM FEATURE
BIFM AWARDS 2015: IMPACT ON SUSTAINABILITY
JAMIE HARRIS
the smallest suppliers must
now demonstrate their green
credentials.”
The amount of work carried
out over the last five years, and
the end results of that work, are
quite staggering. £1.3 million of
chillers have been replaced over
a five-year period; Escalators and
travelators have been fitted with
motion sensors and investors,
which reduce the energy
consumption of the equipment;
and more than 800 urinals have
been fitted with technology that
has saved more than 100 million
litres of water each year. Cleaning
materials used across the site are
all chemical free.
Nearly £500,000 has been
invested in the installation of 850
smart meters, which has enabled
the team to be able to track
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consumption patterns and trends.
Sean Prior, energy manager on
site, oversees the use of smart
metering, and has incorporated
energy targets into the contract
with the building management
system (BMS) provider).
“The biggest thing is to use
the data,” says Prior. “It’s all very
well metering everything, but
there are 2 million bits of data
per month.”
The meters allow the team to
make smarter decisions about
energy usage. When a hall is not
‘in show’, Prior can now drop all
of the lighting down. He can also
identify if a single fridge is being
powered in an empty hall.
“It creates good behaviours - a
lot of it is remarkably obvious
stuff, but it’s installing that best
practice.”
Creating a green culture starts
from the moment an employee
begins working at NEC. On
induction day, they are taken on
a site tour and the environmental
processes are emphasised as
a key facet of the day to day
operations. Getting suppliers
and event organisers to embrace
the green culture has also been
relatively straightforward.
“Everyone wants to be part of
a good news story,” explains Pell.
Sweeping changes
An exhibition centre of this
scale produces large amounts
of cardboard waste, as well as
discarded brochures. To make the
process more efficient a waste
pre-treatment centre was opened
on site in 2009 to give team
NEC the ability to sort materials
into its various streams, before
it is baled and sent for further
processing.
Cartmell thinks that the pretreatment centre was the catalyst
for the sustainability initiatives
that followed.
“We came up with the idea [for
an on site waste pre-treatment
centre] on a post-it note over a
bacon sandwich. I still have that
post-it note.”
Pell explains that many of the
initiatives result from “blue-sky”
thinking in meetings.
“We ask if we could [make an
initiative work], and then we’ve
got the expertise on all sides
of the partnership. We come
up with ideas, and then try to
backwards-engineer them.”
When the pre treatment centre
opened, the site transformed
from nearly 100 per cent of
waste going to landfill, to zero to
landfill, overnight.
“For the first few weeks, I
was working in the centre,”
explains Cartmell. The material is
separated, and each stream has a
different onward journey. Spare
wooden pallets are sold on or
given away to local causes, while
bins have been placed by loading
bays purely for waste paint.
“We had a paint spillage, so
from now on, we’ll know where
the paint is, so it can be treated
correctly.”
The baler has helped increase
a single load of cardboard from
one tonne to 22 compacted
tonnes, which is then taken out
to further processing plants. The
waste trucks are based on site,
in order to further reduce the
organisation’s carbon footprint
by reducing the number of
empty loads. The whole process
has saved the NEC more than
£700,000 in landfill tax so far. It
has diverted more than 10,000
tonnes from landfill to date, and
the number continues to rise.
Food waste is collected from
kitchens, retail outlets and
ALAMY
A waste pre-treatment centre was
opened on site in 2009 and was
the ‘catalyst’ for the sustainability
initiatives that followed
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NATIONAL EXHIBITION CENTRE
FACTS AND FIGURES
NATIONAL EXHIBITION
CENTRE (NEC),
BIRMINGHAM
SOFT SERVICES,
INCLUDING CLEANING
AND WASTE
MANAGEMENT:
OCS
MAINTENANCE:
CBRE NORLAND GROUNDS AND
ESTATES:
MITIE
CATERING:
AMADEUS
INDOOR SPACE:
182,000 SQUARE METRES
EXHIBITION HALLS: 20
FM STAFF: UP TO 2,000
exhibitions and sent to a local
anaerobic digestion plant,
just three miles away, where
the energy generated from
the waste powers a sewage
treatment works. The previous
plant that the NEC used was in
Staffordshire, but once word
of a new plant in construction
reached the NEC, no time
was wasted in setting up a
partnership. The reduction in
travel from 27 miles to three
further cut the carbon footprint.
THE NEC GROUP
The great outdoors
“There are other areas of the site
that people don’t realise have to
be managed,” explains Cartmell.
“We’ve got a sixteen acre lake, 75
acre woodland. We’ve got badger
sets, deer and other wildlife.”
The grounds are maintained
by Mitie, which uses reusable
materials, such as broken
branches, which are turned into
wood chipping for pathways,
throughout. The 14,500 car
parking spaces are cleared of
leaves, and low emission shuttle
buses are used to transport
visitors around the site.
“The storm drains all lead
down to the lake, so we have to
be careful if there is an oil spill
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or anything similar - the team
is trained to respond so that
hazardous materials don’t reach
the drains.”
Testing the waters
The nature of the interconnecting halls gives the NEC
the opportunity to test out
initiatives. LED lights were
installed in one hall and the
resulting energy savings were
monitored. If an initiative is
successful, it can then be rolled
out across the entire site.
As group director of
operations, Pell can also roll out
changes to the NEC Group, where
appropriate. The group owns
other venues such as the Genting
Arena (originally the NEC Arena,
opened in 1980 and based on
the same site), as well as the
Barclaycard Arena (formerly the
National Indoor Arena) and the
International Convention Centre
(ICC), both located in the centre
of Birmingham. The contracts
with service providers are group
contracts, which makes things
easier to mirror across
the portfolio.
“The ICC now utilises the food
waste process, and it is collected
by the same vehicles and taken
to the same digestion plant,”
says Cartmell. “The Genting
Arena also uses the service, and
it’s about to be rolled out to the
Barclaycard Arena.”
“It doesn’t always fit,” says
Pell, “either by footprint, or if
it’s in the city centre, it’s very
difficult. But we’ve got lots and
lots of space here, we can do
wonderful things.”
What next?
Pell, Cartmell and the team
are keen to point out one
their overriding behavourial
characteristics – that they seldom
rest on their laurels. Once one
initiative has been implemented,
rolled out and seen to be
successful in saving money and
carbon, they loook elsewhere for
the next project.
“We’re nearly complete on the
feasibility study on recycling the
site’s waste water,” says Prior.
“The big one is biomass,” says
Pell. “If we can make that work,
we’ll become carbon neutral
almost overnight.”
The team has also thought
about wind farms, but the NEC is
close to an airport (Birmingham
International Airport).
“We’ve considered anaerobic
digestion on site, too. We’ve also
looked at photovoltaic panels on
the roof, as we have got 186,000
square metres of roof space that
could house either PV cells or
thin film PV.
“A biomass (2,000 megawatt)
station would make us a
substantial generating site with
all renewable energy.”
Visitors may continue to
see only the slightest evidence
of the waste management
work going on around
them, but for the team at
the NEC the BIFM
sustainability award is just the
latest milestone in an
ongoing project. FM
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