Three Principles for High-Impact Sustainable Design Guidelines

Translating Sustainability Commitments to Design Strategy

There is no time like the present to invest in a strategic approach to sustainability that has impact at scale. For many organizations, achieving sustainability commitments is a means to improve the experience of their employees and communities in current and future conditions. For C-Suite leaders, bridging the gap between bold sustainability commitments and clear paths to action is key to “walking the talk.”

Sustainable design guidelines provide a mechanism for an organization’s sustainability and real estate teams to work together to achieve sustainability commitments.

Historically, organizations have focused sustainability initiatives on operations, policies, and investments — often overlooking design practices for new construction or renovation. However, as an organization’s real estate portfolio can make up a significant part of a company’s carbon footprint, design guidelines are an essential proactive approach to set organizations up to successfully achieve their commitments. Here are the three key principles for creating high-impact sustainable design guidelines:

Principle 1: Right-Size the Approach

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to sustainable design and construction. The most successful guidelines are customized based on the priorities, business needs, and project typologies of each organization. The first step is to identify gaps between an organization’s sustainability commitments, their typical design, and competitor benchmarks.

When we help our clients set goals, our experts share applicable regulations and incentives, frameworks and metrics aligned with industry standards, and indicative strategies. We facilitate conversations with a variety of stakeholders to ensure we understand the organization’s governance capacity, project typologies, and existing processes for project delivery.

Bringing the right stakeholders to the table is critical and may include representatives from real estate, sustainability, facilities management, marketing, and/or engineering and contractor partners.

Case Study: Global Professional Services Firm, Embodied Carbon Strategy for Interiors
A global professional services firm with a commitment to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 sought to understand how this target should inform the upcoming interior fit-outs in their real estate pipeline. The study focused on three key components to reduce embodied carbon, which can add up over time for renovations:

• Materials guidelines audit — We defined sustainability criteria aligned with the client’s sustainability goals, audited their existing guidelines, and identified which products performed well and which products were candidates for re-selection.
• Floor plan dematerialization study — We evaluated the client’s typical floor plan to identify design opportunities to reduce total material use.
• Life cycle analysis (LCA) of a typical project — We quantified the embodied carbon reductions associated with the recommendations from the audit and dematerialization study.

The study determined a set of lower-effort strategies that could reduce per-project embodied carbon by 26%, and a set of higher-effort strategies that could yield a 40% reduction. The outcome of the study was a decarbonization roadmap for fit-outs, including updates to guidelines and a pilot to track carbon reductions.

Principle 2: Create Clear Requirements and Implementation Tools

Guidelines need to be structured in an easy-to-understand format with clearly laid out requirements and considerations. The basic structure for sustainability guidelines may fall anywhere on the following spectra:

• From third-party rating system alignment to custom standards
• From prescriptive strategies to performance-based targets
• From many requirements with tiered achievement levels to a few universal requirements

In all cases, guidelines should be crafted so they are easy to understand, visually appealing, and clear to multiple audiences. Guideline users may have different preferences to see requirements, for example, organized by project typology, by scope, by responsible party, or by alignment with project schedule milestones. This allows different users to quickly understand which requirements apply to their project and role.

In addition to clearly communicating requirements, sustainability guidelines must also be easy to implement as part of existing project delivery workflows. We work with each client to develop an accompanying package of supporting implementation tools, which may include Request for Proposal (RFP) language, sample documentation, process outlines, responsibility matrices, approved vendor directories, specification language, and tracking & reporting tools. These resources provide teams with the necessary tools they need to successfully implement the sustainability requirements and ease sustainability integration into the standard project delivery process.

Case Study: Confidential Global Retail Client, Sustainability Guidelines and Tracking
Seeking to expand upon their commitment to environmental action, this global fashion brand engaged Gensler to create the first sustainable design guidelines for their retail stores. To overcome the challenge of different regional markets having different levels of maturity for sustainability, the guidelines have a four-tiered set of sustainability strategies, categorized as “Avoid, Good, Better, or Best.” All projects are required to meet the first two tiers, while project market, budget, and schedule determine pursuing strategies in the highest two tiers.

With a small sustainability task force and a large pipeline of projects around the world, the client sought a solution to track guidelines adoption. Gensler developed a web-based checklist for project managers. The platform aggregates data (that all project managers enter) into a singular dashboard visible to members of the sustainability task force to monitor guidelines implementation.

Principle 3: Incorporate Intentional Change Management

The most common point of failure for guidelines is implementation, which is why change management is an essential part of the process. Our workplace strategy colleagues have demonstrated how crucial it is to effectively communicate and support people through change. How can this thinking be applied to sustainable design guidelines? Key components include a planned roll-out with internal and external socialization focusing on the sustainability guidelines' purpose, connection to organizational commitments, and roles and responsibilities.

A successful guidelines roll-out includes feedback loops not just for the launch, but throughout the implementation period to inform future refinement. For example, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) recently completed two public comment periods to inform the forthcoming fifth major version update to LEED, with the intention to update the standard on a five-year update cycle going forward.

Case Study: Gensler Product Sustainability Standards
At Gensler, we have learned first-hand the importance of change management as we implement the sustainable materials standards that we created for our design work, the Gensler Product Sustainability (GPS) Standards. We worked diligently before and after the launch of the first version of the standards in January 2024 to prepare 4,500+ colleagues in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Europe to understand and implement the standards consistently. Key components included:

• Presentation series — We held informational sessions prior to launch communicating responsibilities for program champions, office leads, and design practitioners.
• Internal website of training resources — We crafted role-specific template presentations, how-to guides, workflows, and a suite of implementation tools.
• Ongoing engagement with a support team — We facilitate weekly office hours and an email address for technical questions.

Six months after launching GPS, we shared that the collective efforts of our teams had been effective in encouraging manufacturers to reformulate products, disclose product performance, and invest in sustainability policies in response to our market signal.

Looking Forward

Sustainable design guidelines must be incremental, leveraging new innovations to tackle an evolving climate crisis. Industry leaders regularly iterate and evolve their sustainable design guidelines to increase stringency, expand the breadth of strategies, and increase ability to track progress and impact.

For the many organizations that are not on track to meet their net-zero commitments, real estate leaders have a critical role to help close the gap between commitment and performance. Rather than focus on one flagship project at a time, real estate leaders should consider sustainable design guidelines as an opportunity to accelerate progress by introducing performance requirements aligned with key reduction milestones.