The organisation in this case study has been anonymised for confidentiality purposes.
Tertiary education centres foster a dynamic learning environment for students to develop the skills and experience required to meet ever-changing industry demands. Because of the demand for professional excellence among students, academic staff and other employees, education centres must themselves exhibit a high standard of excellence.
A leading education centre in Western Australia participates in a number of reporting programmes to achieve this social excellence. This includes submitting reports under the National Pollutant Inventory (NPI), the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) scheme, and the annual Benchmark Survey conducted by TEFMA (Tertiary Education Facilities Management Association).
The major challenges to meet the environmental reporting requirements include:
• Defining facility boundaries and operational control to accurately report activities
• Collating and managing large volumes of data from multiple facilities across the state and across different reporting periods
• Performing a variety of complex data calculations to meet reporting requirements
• Producing easy to follow, audit ready reports for all facilities
To meet these challenges, the education centre chose to partner with Greenbase, leading providers of environmental accounting and reporting services.
The Solution: Clear reporting requirements and implementing processes
Greenbase implemented a number of processes to assist with the various reports conducted by the tertiary education centre in order to improve efficiency and quality of reports generated.
Documents for reporting boundaries and thresholds
To unravel the web of operational control and clearly outline reporting requirements, Greenbase drafted scoping documents detailing reporting boundaries, facility activities and reporting thresholds. These documents provide structure for multiple facilities operated by the education centre, creating a reference to quickly identify the operational control across all facilities.
Streamlined data storage
To effectively manage the collection of large volumes of data, Greenbase developed an excel datasheet to collect and store data in 18 month blocks, with data collection occurring every 6 months.
This datasheet centralised data collection for all reports, minimising time spent collecting and sorting data.
By creating this 18 month datasheet, the NPI, NGER and TEFMA reports could all be generated from a single source, streamlining the process and improving the quality and consistency of the data to meet all environmental reporting requirements.
Security through automation, process and efficiency
The use of the Greenbase in-house software suite, IGAN™, for data storage, report calculation and automated report submission elevated the quality, efficiency and auditability for all three environmental reports submitted by the education centre.
As well as rigorous data validation, data input verification and final report review undertaken as part of the Greenbase Way™, our unique approach to environmental accounting checks and regulates every step of the reporting process to ensure any data errors or instances of human error are identified and resolved before the report is completed.
By developing and implementing improved data collection processes, and through the use of IGAN™, the accuracy, quality and auditability of reports were dramatically improved.
Further reading: Local government authority requires assistance completing NPI and NGER reports
