D’Ieteren Immo: A sustainable real estate company driven by innovation

• D'Ieteren Immo is the real-estate branch of D'Ieteren Group.
• The Belgium-based company is responsible for the management of real estate assets including offices, workshops, concessions, logistic centres, residential units, parking lots, and land banks.

Sustainability is an important component of D'Ieteren Immo’s real-estate operations and is incorporated into the vision of their company.

Their vision is to “create long-term value with all our partners: customers & suppliers, coworkers, and stakeholders … to develop or transform real-estate, considering user's requests and sustainable choices.” And their mission statement explicitly focuses on the “sustainable management of its real estate portfolio.”

The long term "Invest and hold" strategy is at the heart of D’Ieteren Immo’s sustainable ambitions. D’Ieteren Immo ensures that its heritage thrives through rigorous governance, sustainable management, long-term relationships with all its stakeholders and a well-trained and proactive team.

In the knowledge that their industry is a large contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions (up to 39%) D’Ieteren Immo believes it has a duty to make rational energy consumption a priority, helping mitigate the impact of climate change in the process.

For D'Ieteren Immo, that means climate mitigation actions like reducing energy consumption through innovation, monitoring, transitioning to green electricity on its own sites, enabling storage of auto-generated energy, water management, and supporting action programs in biodiversity. The company also aims to generate its own energy with green sources, which has already resulted in 40% clean electricity generation!

Creating sustainable value

In 2019, D'Ieteren Immo embarked on an ambitious mission to become a strong player in the real estate industry dedicated to a sustainable future. To achieve these ambitious goals, the company needed external support to help outline a purpose-driven sustainability strategy and to prepare its first sustainability report. Reaching out to our team at FutureproofedBusiness, we helped them achieve these steps!

D'Ieteren Immo approached us to help them achieve the main goal:

“...to become a sustainable real estate company and pioneer in the transition towards a liveable and sustainable society through innovation.”

Our teams worked closely together to perform the following tasks:

• Identify key sustainability themes and formulate specific goals to translate into specific actions & indicators
• Create a sustainability strategy with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) as a framework
• Create an action roadmap/plan and support their employees to collaborate across various departments
• Leverage our guidelines and tools based on the UN SDGs to measure and reduce the social and environmental impact of their activities
• Help prepare the first and second sustainability report

We helped D'Ieteren Immo translate their corporate vision into a sustainable strategy and action plan. By working with our specialists, they now have a company-wide strategy that helps drive sustainable value across all activities.

Working together on sustainability

Futureproofed coordinated interviews with the various stakeholders and a series of personalised consultations and interactive workshops. These interviews included both internal and external stakeholders like the government, clients, suppliers, and sector associations.

During these sessions, a list of material topics was identified that would have a direct or indirect impact on their ability to create, preserve, or reduce an economic, environmental, and social impact on society (and themselves). Internally, we discussed the sustainability priorities and performed a materiality assessment.

From the assessment, we identified key impact areas for D'Ieteren Immo and their stakeholders, resulting in creating the materiality matrix. The materiality matrix helped identify and prioritise D'Ieteren Immo’s important sustainability issues.

The interviews, materiality assessment, and materiality matrix is the basis for creating a clear set of company sustainability priorities that directly link to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), its targets, and the KPIs to help guide their sustainability ambitions.

Aligning company vision with specific goals

We worked with D'Ieteren Immo to establish four overarching sustainability goals to meet in the coming five-to-ten years.

1. Improve operational performance - to enhance energy proficiency, comfort standards, and ecological value of their real estate properties. Focus on sustainable maintenance and use, whilst building and strengthening long-term relationships with stakeholders.
2. Future-proof new investments and refurbishment projects  - to make sure these new projects are designed and built to withstand current and future needs, whilst providing flexible and attractive living and working environments that minimise environmental impact.
3. Reduce company and portfolio-based Greenhouse Gas Emissions - to meet our goal of becoming CO2-neutral, by 2040 at the latest.
4. Create meaningful jobs and promote opportunities for personal/professional growth - to maintain a healthy and attractive working environment.

D'Ieteren Immo’s company vision also needed to translate into specific and measurable goals. These specific goals are the foundation of its sustainability strategy. And each action outlined in their sustainability agenda is coupled with SDG frameworks. The goals (and targets) include;

• Climate positive buildings,
• Protect and improve the natural environment,
• Smart water management,
• Efficient material management,
• Improve quality of life, and
• Build and maintain strong relationships/partnerships

D'Ieteren Immo’s company vision is to become more sustainable and contribute to the transition towards a liveable and sustainable society.

From the vision to the goals and targets, the company would need a roadmap to help them follow through on their sustainability ambitions.

A sustainable roadmap

Meeting ambitious sustainability outcomes is only viable with a well-thought-out action plan. D'Ieteren Immo’s action plan or “Roadmap 2030” has specific sustainable actions and indicators.

The roadmap includes a detailed outline of the actions required to achieve the four sustainability goals mentioned, actions for both the short and long term. The roadmap is the result of an intensive, bottom-up approach with multiple stakeholders and groups, where each portion focused on separate sustainability priorities: corporate management, property management, and project management.

Ethical principles are also important to D'Ieteren Immo and their sustainability report includes guidelines for human rights, zero tolerance for corruption & bribery, and inclusion & diversity. To review their 2019 Sustainability Report, visit the company website.

Evaluation & tracking

Our team of specialists worked closely with D'Ieteren Immo to identify specific key performance indicators (KPIs) for the company. The KPIs will help track their progress as they progress towards achieving these sustainable outcomes.

Futureproofed also customised a sustainability assessment tool for D'Ieteren Immo. We developed two internal tools to help track the performance and progress of their new investments and refurbishments. It will help their team measure and reduce the social and environmental impact of D'Ieteren Immo’s activities, fulfilling both personal and SDGs ambitions.

Our team at Futureproofed supported D'Ieteren Immo during the full corporate sustainable development process from goal planning to the action plan, and evaluation. And we’re proud to help them in achieving their ambitious vision for sustainability!

“We have the ambition to become a sustainable real estate company and a pioneer in the transition towards a liveable and sustainable society through innovation. Futureproofed helped us in translating this ambition into a company-wide strategy for sustainable value creation. They guided us through an intensive bottom-up trajectory with external stakeholder consultations and interactive workshops that resulted in a clear set of priorities, targets and KPIs to follow up on our progress."

- Paul Monville, CEO

Partner with us to help reach your sustainability goals. We can support your business with similar frameworks as D'Ieteren Immo and in an efficient, data-driven fashion.