We kicked off the project with 75 participants (municipalities and regional Flemish government), much more than initially expected. At the end of the project 108 participants took part in the project, covering more than 30% of the total group of stakeholders.
The project approach is to include all aspects that have an impact on the realisation of the energy and climate objectives and other goals for public buildings. Although the focus of the methodology is real estate, other aspects such as spatial policy, mobility, citizen participation, climate adaptation,… are addressed within the SPREM methodology.
To translate this methodology into practice, training sessions and individual coaching sessions were provided to the participants to support creating their strategic real estate visions and plans. As such, the training methodology was transformed into a step-by-step 'learning by doing' approach, with the SPREM coach as a guide. Supporting tools have been developed to support decision making and management of the transition period towards a climate neutral real estate portfolio.
Next to the training sessions on SPREM, several sessions were organized on specific related topics, involving more theme-related external partners.
All material is available on a learning platform, which is shared in cooperation with the European project BE REEL! (renovation of residential building stock) and freely available for consultation.
COVID-19 as well as the energy crisis had quite a big impact on the resources (both budget and personnel) of the public entities, especially municipalities. Next to a more structural lack of resources, this caused a delay in finalizing the strategic real estate plans. Hence several mitigation actions were defined and implemented. We worked on:
(1) visibility and priority:
(a) Priority: use legislation / political agreements to convince
(b) Visibility: animation movie to explain SPREM and the added value (can be consulted on www.sure2050.be)
(c) Visibility: opened up our webinars for all public entities
(2) Political commitment:
(a) Creation of a policy document to be used by the College of Mayor and Aldermen to define and agree on the framework for a real estate policy. we use the Covenant of Mayors as overall framework. When the framework for SPREM is politically agreed, the administration can work out the details.
(3) Resources
(a) VEB and HFB (as procurement organizations) procured a Framework Agreement for sustainable real estate management in the public sector. Through a framework agreement, we ensure a correct methodology is followed, and as well relieve the public entities which do not need to procure themselves.
(b) intensive coaching for 5 selected municipalities (small to medium sized) - create ambassadors.
We started coaching of investment projects in parallel with SPREM. As implementation of SPREM takes longer and investment projects continue, we can ensure with the project coaching that investment projects are in line with the goals of SPREM and to reach carbon neutral public buildings. At the end of the project, we achieved investment projects for 28,156 mio EUR; from 105 investment projects.
All information on the project is collected in the final report.
