Choosing Sustainable Materials for Long-term Facility Management Results  

Over the last five years, the sustainable building materials market has grown significantly due to increased demand for eco-friendly construction, green building codes, and the construction industry’s movement to a circular economy business model. Sustainable building materials include those that can be sourced, produced, reconfigured, or repurposed easily and disposed of with minimal environmental impact throughout their lifecycle.

The most common sustainable materials include aluminum, steel, and copper, which can be endlessly recycled into new products and assemblies. Their use can reduce project waste by up to 50% and reduce operational and maintenance costs across the building’s lifecycle. To maximize these savings, the IFMA Summit 2025 Real Estate Insights suggests the following process for facility teams and commercial property owners to use when choosing sustainable materials for a remodel or new construction project.

Assess Current Material Practices 

Perform a Commercial Real Estate (CRE) Audit to identify discrepancies between a property’s current use and its highest and best use in response to evolving real estate trends, helping property owners align material choices, sustainability investments, and asset performance with current market expectations. Once the potential market, performance, and regulatory/compliance gaps have been identified, facility teams can consider different improvement options, such as strategic leasing agreements, targeted retrofits, and adaptive reuse projects that are ideal for incorporating sustainable materials and products.

Use a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool to determine the amount of greenhouse gas emissions created during the material’s extraction, manufacture, transport, construction, maintenance, and end-of-life cycle. Using a holistic tool such as an LCA can help architects, engineers, and facility teams to make informed, data-driven decisions to reduce a project’s overall carbon footprint.

Add a deconstruction checklist to further reduce greenhouse gas emission levels by maximizing material reuse & reconfiguration and designing for future disassembly. Facility teams should also consider low-carbon materials, such as timber, which sequesters carbon, and green steel, which uses hydrogen instead of coal in its manufacturing process.

Collaborate for Better Choices 

Many companies tend to operate in silos, meaning their divisions typically work independently of one another. However, bringing all these viewpoints together allows sustainability issues and potential solutions to be openly discussed, compared, and debated thoroughly amongst team members. For example, every business needs a robust data cabling system that can be accessed quickly for tenant updates and changes. However, most buildings locate their cabling runs above the finished ceiling using cable trays. By adopting a low-profile raised flooring system, accessing the Ethernet cables requires removing a few pieces of the modular flooring to gain quick and easy access to every cable or connection point.

Input from occupants, tenants, and stakeholders should be collected and discussed as part of the sustainability conversation to ensure that any material changes align with the organization’s environmental, societal, and governance (ESG) goals. Facility management teams should also be part of this roundtable to share and discuss historical data and how to improve sustainability goals for the built environment, ongoing maintenance programs, and future remodel projects.

Certification programs such as LEED and BREEAM can serve as a framework for planning and construction teams to explore different approaches to improving sustainability through pre-approved materials, assemblies, and products.

Track Sustainability Efforts with KPIs 

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable metrics that track an organization’s ESG progress and success. Here are the most common KPIs by category.

Environmental (E):

• Carbon Footprint: Total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Scope 1, 2, 3).
• Energy: Consumption (total, renewable vs. non-renewable).
• Water: Total usage and conservation.
• Waste: Generation, reduction, reuse, and recycling rates.
• Biodiversity: Impact on local ecosystems.
• Sustainable Sourcing: Percentage of sustainably sourced materials.

Social (S):

• Employee Engagement: Participation in sustainability initiatives.
• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI): Workforce representation, inclusion survey results.
• Labor Practices: Working hours, work-life balance, training hours.
• Supply Chain: Supplier audits for human rights, ethical labor, and diversity.
• Community: Volunteering hours, community investment.

Governance (G):

• ESG Reporting: Compliance with frameworks (e.g., GRI, CSRD).
• Supplier Audits: Percentage of suppliers audited for CSR standards.
• Economic Impact: Financial benefits/costs of sustainability initiatives.

The CapEx-to-OpEx shift is a significant trend for facility teams and property owners, as organizations focus more on operational efficiency, predictable budgeting, and long-term maintenance planning, where proactive upkeep helps reduce unexpected costs and extend the lifecycle of building systems and equipment.

Sustainability Tools and Skills

To adopt an LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) template, start by defining your goal and project scope, then gather data for the Life Cycle Inventory, followed by an Impact Assessment, and finally Interpretation, using available templates (like those from the DOE or Assess CCUS) or creating your own Excel workbook to streamline data collection, analysis, and reporting for product sustainability.

Create a sustainable material checklist that includes modularity to reduce procurement and installation costs. Incorporate origin tracking, the process of documenting and verifying the complete history, source, and movement of an item or data from its creation to its current state. This process establishes a verifiable chain of custody from the supplier to final installation and maintenance, ensuring ESG compliance for the organization.

Consider training at least one team member in LEED/WELL/BREEAM requirements for ongoing maintenance or future remodel projects. This will allow the organization to maximize operational savings while improving occupant health and property values, and strengthening brand reputation to attract new clients, workers, and investments.

Another option for teams is to extend the building lifecycle with adaptable infrastructure elements, such as raised access flooring systems, to address growing technology use and increased bandwidth demands. The Gridd® Adaptive Cabling Distribution® system features a revolutionary modular design that moves traditional cabling systems to a more accessible location directly above the finished concrete slab. The 100% US Steel construction provides a durable, sustainable solution that allows facility managers to quickly change, upgrade, or completely reconfigure a space to meet the evolving tech needs of companies, large and small. To learn more about improving your property’s sustainability and life cycle with raised access flooring, contact a Gridd Advisor.