COMMENT
THINK GREEN GO LEAN
Kiran Kachela, the Founder of Continuous Improvement Projects explains the company’s
‘Think green, go Lean!’ approach to sustainability in FM
At CI Projects, we have been paying close
attention to the Circular Economy and
embracing sustainability in our fight against
waste. We aren’t the only ones. Most of us working
in FM will be aware that clients are increasingly
looking for environmentally sustainable solutions,
and companies that o er that will have an edge.
But all too o en we see the mindset that favours
disposability so long as it is the cheapest option.
It does require a mind shi to redefine value to
include sustainability and waste.
Here’s an excellent example. One of the team from
CI Projects was in a client meeting recently, where a
discussion about the maintenance schedule of fire
extinguishers and fire blankets was taking place.
Every six months, fire blankets need to be taken out
of their covers, unfolded, inspected then refolded,
put back in the covers and repositioned, or any
damaged blankets removed and replaced. All of this
would be documented and logged. A fairly standard
maintenance task. However, it was pointed out
that it was cheaper to replace all the fire blankets,
regardless of whether they needed replacing, than
to carry out this maintenance, and not just with fire
blankets, but a lot of other assets too.
This raises a very interesting and important
question about value. How do you determine value in
this example? It isn’t as simple any more as viewing
it in terms of monetary cost, or even in terms of
“e iciency”. Once you introduce concepts of waste
12 AUGUST 2021
and reuse into this scenario, there is more thought
needed.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY
These are the issues that the Circular Economy hopes
to address, by reusing instead of disposing. The
adoption of a circular economy o ers considerable
economic benefits; Defra calculates that UK
businesses could benefit by up to £23 billion per year
through low cost or no cost improvements in the
e icient use of resources, while McKinsey estimates
that the global value of resource e iciency could
eventually reach $3.7 trillion per year.
But putting that into action in the FM world, where
the bottom line is still almost always monetary, isn’t
straightforward. But it can be done. Understanding
that eliminating waste does not need to be a choice
between monetary value and caring for the planet,
but that both can be included in your definition of
value, does require some creative thinking and some
re-evaluation of ways of working.
Since Continuous Improvement Projects was
founded in 2012, we have been using the principles
of Lean to eliminate waste. Lean is a problem solving
and business improvement methodology. It provides
a way of optimising people, resources and business
processes. At its centre is the identification, removal
and prevention of waste, which is defined as anything
that doesn’t add value. When combining Lean with
environmental awareness, we achieve a Lean-Green
approach that acts as a powerful vehicle for change.
In the fire blanket example, using Lean, we needed
to define the problem. It turned out the crux of the
problem was that the inspections were carried out by
engineers, who were great at engineering but not so
great at neatly folding blankets so they could easily
go back in their covers.
Could the manufacturer make them easier to
inspect and refold, or could maintenance sta be
taught a better way of doing it? Do inspections need
to be carried out by engineers? Could second hand
fire blankets be donated and reused? What we didn’t
do was just accept and assume that the best option
was to throw away a thousand unused blankets every
six months, but nor did we just accept the ine iciency
that had been identified.
THINK GREEN CAMPAIGN
Over at CI Projects, we produce waste, the same
as everyone else, sometimes it’s unavoidable. But
I’ve realised we are already using Lean to develop
a strong culture of continuous improvement and
achieve sustainable change that lasts, it’s at the core
of what we do.
The Lean Green approach promotes a Circular
Economy and is a new way of doing things that brings
business benefits, as well as positive social and
environmental impacts. Developing the philosophy
of the Circular Economy and environmental
sustainability into our Lean approach, gave us the
Think Green, Go Lean campaign that we recently
launched. The aim is to design out waste and reduce,
reuse and recycle what we use. Waste is usual a
result of poor design. We must review the end-to-end
value stream to identify, remove and prevent waste.
By changing our mindset to view waste as a design
fault and being open to changing our behaviours and
processes, we can avoid waste in the first place.
We looked around to see what tools were available
to help companies use a Lean method to work toward
a more sustainable and less wasteful way of working
and we didn’t find much, so we developed our own.
That is why we are releasing a whole host of useful
tools, videos and live events for free over the coming
months. These will help you to not only identify
where waste is hiding and start to eliminate it, but
also measure your successes. Like a lot of people, we
genuinely care about reducing waste, and rather than
just talk about it, we want to share ideas that work so
that we can continue to learn and improve.
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