Genesta in Control of Efficiency & Sustainability with Nuuka’s Building Process Analytics Platform

When it comes to data collection and reporting on the sustainability of their assets, Nordic real estate company Genesta trusts in the solutions Nuuka has to offer.
As a result, Genesta has been able to make major improvements in efficiency, quality of data collection and GRESB reporting standard.  In this interview, David Neil, CEO of Genesta tells us more about the decision to use Nuuka for their sustainability reporting and efficiency gains they achieved as a result.

“Nuuka is able to deliver turnkey solutions for data collection as well as reporting systems, which made it easy for us to get the necessary property data out for sustainability reporting” – David Neil, CEO Genesta

What was the biggest challenge you had before?

Neil: Basically, we had three major challenges.
Energy consumption communication
To provide our stakeholders with accurate consumption information, we needed a data platform to realize this. Together with the people of Nuuka, we did a walkthrough of the sites. There we gave a very detailed description of what we would be needing to automate the data collection and reporting. They were  willing to do the implementation from start to finish. This was crucial to us, since we are a very lean organisation without the resources needed for this specific project.
GRI and GRESB standards
For investor communication we needed a GRI and GRESB based tool. With Nuuka, we obtained a very proactive and innovative reporting tool that actually helps us to reach this goal.
Internal reporting on sustainability metrics
We were able to transparantly set both short- and long term targets at the portfolio, building and fund levels, and compare these targets to realized data.

Why Nuuka and not another company?

Neil: The main reason for selecting Nuuka was the fact that it sells a ‘plug and play’ solution that can be customized. With a lot of enthusiasm and in co-creation with us, they developed the system according to our requirements. In this way, we got the best of both worlds – a readymade system and a willingness to adapt it to our purposes.
We were looking for a tool that would help us to automate our reporting towards GRESB and GRI. We have been using Nuuka’s solution for several years now. Till this day their willingness to keep on developing their platform to meet our changing and evolving needs makes them a reliable and sustainable partner.
There were two big reasons why we decided to partner up with Nuuka. First of all, they offer data collection solutions that are manufacturer independent. Since we have a variety of installations and equipment, being able to connect with our different systems is an important consideration in choosing our supplier. Besides that, their solutions are tailored for property investors who need to get data on their assets for sustainability reporting.

Could you describe the decision making process at Genesta?

Neil: The decision making process is quite straightforward at Genesta. First, together with our sustainability team and the IT and Marketing Department, we had preliminary discussions with Nuuka. After defining two projects, I gave a formal OK. During the implementation, they met with a lot of people, many of which they also trained. In this way we teamed up with them to innovate and implement from the beginning.

How did Nuuka’s solution help you to comply with the GRESB standards?

Neil: In the real estate market it becomes more and more important to comply with standards like GRESB on sustainability reporting. The reporting gives us the opportunity to benchmark our property assets. Nuuka’s reporting tools automatically arranges synchronized asset data directly from the data sources towards the report which complies with GRESB survey standards. This saves us time and guarantees a high data quality.

What short and long term results were achieved?

Neil: Immediately, we could streamline our entire sustainability data collection process, which saved us a lot of time. On top of that the quality of the sustainability information improved a great deal. On the long term, the increased attention on sustainability issues within our organization was rewarded with the GRESB Green Star Status in 2015.