CSR Group

I work in procurement for a logistics company in Sharjah, and most of what I know about buildings I learned from arguing about invoices.

Last year my brother's small company moved from an old tower to a newer one about fifteen minutes away. Same number of desks, same working hours, same bad coffee machine. The electricity cost fell by close to a third. Nobody changed any habit. The building was simply made for the climate: shaded glass on the west side, so the AC was not fighting the sun every afternoon.

This changed how I look at our own reporting. We put a lot of effort into staff behaviour campaigns, switch this off, print less of that. It is not wrong, but the building decides most of it before anyone arrives in the morning.

Now when colleagues ask me about moving office, or a flat for that matter, I ask two things first: which direction the windows face, and what year the tower was finished. It is not a full method, but it is better than the brochure.

The bad coffee machine moved with them, by the way.