The Gotham 360 team took a trip to Arlington, VA to attend the JBG Smith 2019 Greenfair and Education Program. Sean Mullen, Sarah Gilly, and Ashley Kossakowski represented Gotham 360 at this tradeshow-style event with over 40 vendors that service JBG Smith. JBG SMITH is an S&P 400 company that owns, operates, invests in and develops assets concentrated in leading urban infill submarkets in and around Washington, DC. Their mixed-use operating portfolio comprises approximately 19 million square feet of high-quality office, multifamily and retail assets.

JBG Smith organizes this event every year (this was our 5th year in attendance!) to educate JBG property managers and engineers on sustainability and to meet vendors in person. Some of the other vendors present were Siemens, TransitScreen, and Pritchett Controls.

The event had three educational sessions, which included: Intro to Building Automation Systems, Chiller Efficiency and Log Readings, and Engaging Tenants through Sustainability. Jessica Long and Amy Jacks from the Office of Sustainability presented on their efforts to engage property managers and tenants across the JBG Portfolio. They encouraged property managers to add sustainability as a line-item in their agendas when meeting with tenants, provided some statistics on their properties (over 50% of JBG properties have EV charging capabilities!), and identified ways to minimize tenants’ impacts on the environment and increase accountability. They also walked through some utility dashboards that Gotham provides, , which they use to educate their tenants and track improvements year-over-year.

Utility dashboards can provide useful tools for commercial real estate to keep both your tenants and your C-suite executives informed. Gotham 360 works to personalize reports for our clients, which track relevant KPIs and answer high-level questions as well as provide granular data. If your organization is interested in this offering, contact the Gotham 360 team.

There are many lessons we can learn from the approach of JBG Smith to accelerate their sustainability efforts. They regularly interact with their property managers, giving them the resources they need to accurately disseminate information about sustainability to their tenants. Sustainability is all about translating facts and figures into actions, and JBG is doing a great job (with the help of Gotham 360 course). It is always a pleasure to work with clients who are focused on educating their property managers and engineers on sustainable practices.