Earth Day 2022: It’s Time to Make Buildings Better

What does sustainability mean to you? As Atrius team members, we have a unique relationship with sustainability. While our day-to-day activities help reduce our individual environmental footprints, working for a sustainability company whose mission is enabling smarter, safer, greener spaces is an incredible opportunity to shrink the world’s collective carbon footprint.

In anticipation of Earth Day 2022, we asked our colleagues to reflect on their personal and our company’s “promises to the earth.”  Here are a few responses to why they choose to work for a sustainability company and their perspectives on how Atrius solutions enable customers to fulfill their respective organizational missions. We hope their thoughtful comments energize and inspire you!

Transparency In Corporate Sustainability

“We’ve seen an emphasis on the need for transparency in corporate sustainability initiatives, which is a huge step forward to improving the health of our planet. Companies are uncovering footprints far greater than their immediate operations, and with new attention to the entire value chain. I’m excited to be a part of this opportunity where we start investing in more robust solutions to help all of us create a better built environment.”

Talented Minds and Creative Solutions

“Working in the sustainability sector, I’m often asked how I remain hopeful, not bogged down by the climate crisis — for me it’s the all of the talented minds we have working on ways to innovate and come up with creative solutions.”

Enabling Sustainability in Aviation

“Sustainability in aviation is a major challenge in the air and on the ground. I’m really proud to work at a company building powerful tools for so many airports, airlines, and other aviation partners to help tackle these challenges on the ground. Focus on how to make flying greener is front and center – sustainable jet fuel, reducing in-flight plastics and waste, etc. – but aviation has a vast footprint on the ground. I’m excited to see how our solutions help our aviation partners build greener operations across their airports, corporate campuses, and below-the-wing ground operation buildings.”

Part of a Collective Solution

“Studies consistently show that throwing facts and figures out about the dire state of any mammoth-level issue leads to inaction. This paralysis is not based on a lack of desire to help but not knowing how. The current climate crisis is a perfect example.

Sustainability solutions and technology provide concrete, inspiring examples of how we can use our collective brainpower to significantly reduce our impact on the planet. When this technology can further provide step-by-step guidance to reduce emissions, the desire to help can be translated into deep engagement. Atrius allows stakeholders of the built space to be part of the collective solution, and I am incredibly inspired by the opportunity to work for an organization at the heart of this transformation.”

The Business of Sustainability

“Sustainability is a great business strategy and truly transformational when teams are motivated by a higher purpose. We are excited to be on this journey with our customers to create smarter, safer, greener spaces.”

The Fourth Industrial Revolution of Buildings

“The built environment is in transition as we digitally transform how we live, work, and play in spaces. Through a combination of hardware and software, we’re delivering solutions that help reduce the environmental impact buildings have for our communities and planet.”

Aligning Energy Conservation with Business Goals

“Impactful energy conservation can only be achieved where we learn how to do it while enhancing our business goals. With Atrius solutions, we enable our customers to do exactly that by leveraging building automation and sensing technologies to identify the right, business-forward opportunities to conserve energy.”

Our Shared Responsibility

“Sustainability is a commitment to a lifestyle that demonstrates kindness to our planet and natural resources. We have a responsibility to preserve our Earth not just for future generations, but for today’s communities. I believe we’ll have the biggest impact when everyone does their part.”

Achieving Balance

“Sustainability is a process; not an endpoint. In my experience, our customers are pressured to do more with less, less resources, staff, time, budget, etc., and be more efficient, sustainable, and digital, at the same time. We take a phased approach to address and overcome future challenges like deferred maintenance, aging infrastructure, lack of transparency into operations, etc.”

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Earth Day Customer Spotlight: Black & McDonald

We asked Kelly Christensen, Manager of Strategy and Pursuits, at Black & McDonald how Atrius software is central to ESG strategies at a multi-national construction, facilities management, and technical solutions company.

“B&M has uses the Atrius platform for not only our clients, but for ourselves too! B&M has integrated 19 of our own offices across Canada as part of our overall ESG strategy to helps us in our goals of quantifying, managing and committing to reducing our impact on the environment and decarbonizing operations.

Through using the Atrius platform for energy management, we have integrated all of the utility bills from each of our B&M offices to Atrius, this way we are able to monitor and benchmark energy and water cost and consumption, while also being able to report of waste diversion rates and carbon emissions for each of our offices across all regions. Having Atrius in place for tracking all of our energy and sustainability data helps maintain all of our offices being BOMA certified.

Having Atrius deployed internally allows B&M to turn our offices into Living Labs, with Atrius serving as the single pane that we are able to layer new, innovative technologies onto. In our Markham office, we have installed the Acuity nLight system when we did a lighting retrofit back in 2020. The nLight system allows for control of zones of lighting in our office, and offers advanced features such as occupancy sensors, daylight harvesting and schedules which have all contributed to a 28% overall energy reduction in the office. Our Saskatoon office has installed circuit level energy monitoring which had a built in integration to the Atrius dashboard in order to identify assets which were major energy consumers and opportunities for retrofits in the building, as part of our overall lifecycle plan.”