Walking the talk
Having committed to a sustainable journey for more than a decade and a half, mobile communications giant Vodacom has achieved excellence in green building operations and management through dual 5-Star Green Star Existing Building Performance (EBP) certifications for both its Business Park and Corporate Park buildings.
While the buildings – part of Vodacom South Africa’s headquarters campus in Midrand, Gauteng – boast solid sustainability features to best enhance resource efficiency in respect of energy, water and waste management, WSP sustainability consultant Alison Groves says that the most impressive aspect of Vodacom’s current feat lies not so much in what has been done, but in how the process has been carried out.
“We started looking at these accreditations about two or three years ago, and realised that we didn’t have a fine-grain view of how the buildings performed. We installed more sophisticated metering systems and began to gather robust data. It’s one thing to have a lot of information on hand, but it’s quite another to extract a level of detail that makes proactive changes possible. While it’s not as enticing as all the green ‘bells and whistles’ that marked the first stage of South Africa’s sustainability inroads, embracing an intense data approach and taking smart facilities management to the next level is where we find ourselves at the height of sector innovation,” she says.
Vodacom’s Corporate Park boasts an impressive facade that makes use of double-glazed strip windows.
On good business and doing good
Groves says that Vodacom has done exceptionally well to review its asset registers and put people in place with the administrative skills necessary to take their operations further. “Managing a facility used to be about ensuring that water bills were paid and leaks were repaired, but now it’s about improving documentation process gaps and pre-emptive maintenance – it’s about ensuring that the aspects that make a building sustainable are not simply window dressing, but are monitored and interpreted daily.”
Green Building Council South Africa’s (GBCSA) CEO Lisa Reynolds agrees that Vodacom’s latest Green Star certifications independently quantify that the organisation has “walked its talk”. Vodacom’s tagline of “further together” sums up the spirit of its journey, which has progressed from its low-carbon vision. “In 2011, GBCSA awarded Vodacom’s Innovation Centre a 6-Star Green Star rating for the building design – the first such rating in the southern hemisphere. Then in 2020, after implementing various sustainable interventions, Vodacom’s refurbished Century City building in Cape Town received a 5-Star Green Star (EBP) accreditation. We are very proud to be part of their sustainability journey and look forward to partnering with their project teams into the future,” says Reynolds.
A passionate belief in creating a better future for the communities served by the telecom group, leading by example, and encouraging other organisations to actively invest in a future where good business and doing good are synonymous, are what drives Vodacom’s green investment, explains Vodacom South Africa’s CEO Sitho Mdlalose. “As a purpose-led and environmentally conscious organisation, we are constantly looking for ways to minimise our carbon footprint,” he says. “Organisations need to start taking decarbonisation goals seriously if we hope to slow the effects of global warming. However, this cannot be limited to high-level corporate initiatives. We are extremely proud of all our initiatives, big and small, as well as the changes we have made to achieve this certification.”
There are a number of technologies that facilities teams can use to collect data and understand where and when maintenance is needed. At the heart of making these technologies useful is the employment of a trained facilities management team that can effectively manage a smart building, helping achieve its goal of reducing waste and improving operational efficiency.
• Facility Management Software Systems (FMSS): Platforms that consolidate facility tasks, thus eliminating inefficiencies and redundancies.
• Fault Detection and Diagnostics (FDD): Solutions that detect, isolate, identify and evaluate problems as they occur. The goal of these tools is to end the break-fix cycle of maintenance and help teams be more proactive.
• Building Automation Systems (BAS): Solutions that allow technicians and operators to access, control and monitor multiple building systems from a single interface.
• Internet of Things (IoT): IoT builds a central environment for tracking all aspects of facility management. This technology has groundbreaking implications for the industry, and even helps with decreasing energy-related expenditures to help reach sustainability goals.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics: Machine-learning models offer enhanced precision for improving predictive maintenance and resource allocation, helping teams be more proactive. McKinsey predicts that AI can reduce maintenance costs by 10-20%.
Cutting-edge sustainability solutions
Vodacom is a long-standing client of WSP in Africa, with both companies sharing a commitment to environmental stewardship and sustainable innovation. Having been involved in more than 50 diverse sustainability projects across industry sectors, WSP’s experience enabled them to implement cutting-edge sustainability solutions at Vodacom’s Corporate Park and Business Park buildings. These included advanced energy-efficiency measures, water-conservation strategies and the integration of renewable energy systems.
Vodacom Business Park is a two-storey office building spanning 4 900m2, with the reception area opening into a double-volume atrium. The Eastern facade is characterised by double-glazed strip windows, and the project did well on energy and water efficiency, with lighting power efficiency implemented on site. With regard to illumination, 99% of the lights are LED, and the remaining 1% is due for replacement in the next maintenance cycle. Vodacom Corporate Park is a four-storey building spanning 15 830m2, and also benefits from lighting power efficiency and having had Vodacom policies and plans implemented on site.
Exceeding environmental performance standards “By leveraging a passive building design review, a building optimisation review and rigorous compliance monitoring, WSP ensured that both buildings not only met, but also exceeded environmental performance standards,” says Groves. Further to this, Vodacom has adopted green cleaning principles, indoor air-quality management and occupancy feedback.
Vodacom’s 25-year-old sizeable HQ campus has recently completed the installation of 6.2MW solar panels, which will generate around 10.8 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of its own clean power every year – roughly 25% of the headquarters’ power consumption. This will decrease its dependence on coal-generated electricity from the national grid and effectively reduce 11 000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) every year.
The on-site solar farm and an electric vehicle charging station for customers and staff further highlight’s Vodacom’s sustainability efforts. The electric vehicle charging station doubles up as a recycling pod for waste collection, making it convenient for all staff and customers to drop off their items for recycling. This gives easy access to the resources people need to make green choices. The eco-village project is also a first step towards Vodacom’s plan to migrate a fifth of their fleet to electric vehicles by 2030, further accelerating the company towards a net-zero future.
Vodacom’s sustainability strategy 2020 – 2025 focuses on a number of key pillars to achieve its commitment to improving the lives of the next 100 million customers through connection, while also reducing its environmental impact. In terms of climate change risk mitigation, the corporation has committed to halving its environmental impact by 2025. With regard to reducing energy use or sourcing renewables, Vodacom is aiming for a R24.8 million reduction in energy costs, a 16 372MWh reduction in electricity, and carbon savings of 17 607mtCO₂e (metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent). Water consumption has been reduced by 58% in the past three years through the adoption of water-wise practices such as the use of tap aerators and a rainwater dam. The organisation continues to roll out smart water meters in municipalities.
Working together for a better future
“At Vodacom, we are fully aware that this strategy would remain just a strategy, unless it was fully adopted by the business, and actioned and ingrained into the performance measures of employees at all levels within the organisation. We therefore had to break it down into strategic focus areas that were easy to understand and which could then be cascaded into a set of targets adopted by the business over the short, medium and long term. The business world has a vital role to play in ensuring the 2020s are a decade in which meaningful progress is made towards a better, more sustainable future. Business must work in partnership with stakeholders across government and civil society to mitigate risks and seek out opportunities to act in ways that deliver transformational – rather than simply incremental – progress towards the goal of better future that is able to sustain over nine billion people living well, within planetary boundaries,” concludes Mdlalose.
