One of the bonuses of my job.

One of the things I love about my job is that it allows me to get out and about to meet interesting people (and not stay chained to a desk all week). Once in a while I get a day where I visit a business that makes me realise why I enjoy doing what I do so much! Every so often I get to visit small businesses that punch way above their weight – last week I had such an experience.

I was in Retford in North Notts, not a particularly industrial town, in fact quite a small market town but home it transpires to a business that supplies 90% of the UK market it is in. What do they make? Wire and traditional ropes mainly for the theatre and entertainment market. And it is in this sector that they supply 90% of the UK market they occupy!

I get to meet some amazingly interesting and successful people in my jobs and it is amazing what businesses I discover in Nottinghamshire and the surrounding area that are national or even world leaders in their market place. For example did you know that we have the only UK manufacturer of cotton wool balls in Notts?

Nine times out of ten the people running these businesses are also extremely nice people as well – another good reason for having a job that keeps me out of the office as much as it does! We are often overlooked by London and the South (they don’t get the concept of the Midlands), but we have some great businesses – think Rolls Royce, Boots, Paul Smith just to name a few of the well-known ones!

So the East Midlands has a lot going for it – don’t forget it!

 

Landlords can help tenants save energy

The traditional Landlord and tenant relationship is normally seen as a ‘them and us’ style relationship. Often there is little beneficial communication between the two sides, and invariably the only contact is around quarter days when rent is due!

However one of the UK’s largest real estate investment trusts (REIT) British Land have recently been trialling automated meter reading systems in some of their multi tenanted buildings with a view to sharing the findings with the tenants. In tandem with energy-saving initiatives, the REIT has introduced a six monthly energy consumption report for its occupiers. This shows each occupier’s use of energy and compares it to the same period in the previous year together with their performance against others in the same building.

Monitoring and good management are key factors in energy savings and the evidence shows what can be achieved with relatively low levels of capital investment, particularly in additional metering. The key finding has been that active and expert management of the building counts. British Land is in effect funding its own version of the government’s green deal, forward funding green capital investment and recovering the outlay at no additional cost to occupiers through guaranteed savings in energy, which are given by the supplier. This enables the landlord to recoup investment costs through an increased service charge on the back of reduced costs for occupiers.

So by helping tenants see what they are using in energy terms the landlord saves them money, makes them more comfortable and reduces his own costs. While at the same time he makes the building more attractive for potential tenants – simple but highly effective!

 

The ‘joy’ of online systems!

One of my roles at work is as an energy assessor – it is through my training for this role that I have developed my interest in the ‘green agenda’. I am qualified under the RICS who are my professional body as a Chartered Surveyor.

So far so good – the system I have to use to enter my data for energy assessments is an online one, called Lifespan SBEM – it is quite user-friendly and generally works well. As with all online systems it has its moments. Sometimes I have to log out and back in as it will freeze, but this is not a major issue, just an annoyance.

However, today I was planning to do a lot of inputting to get a number of EPC’s sorted for Monday – this is one of the joys of online systems – you can work from anywhere that has access to the web. So up early this morning to watch the Grand Prix and input data.

Lifespan SBEM is working fine today as a website, but, and here is the problem as I see it with lots of on-line systems, it needs to link to another site (Landmark) to get its address information. Also without this address information (and unique address code) Lifespan won’t allow me to start inputting a new job.

So I am ready to go but can’t. And being a Sunday no one is available at Landmark or Lifespan to tell me when the database will be back on-line to allow me to work!

Surely if you are providing a system that can be accessed 24/7 you should provide support 24/7?

This is going to be a long day (and night if the database only comes back tonight). And if it’s not back until tomorrow expect me to be extra grumpy at work tomorrow!