Park People: Lucy Mason, Estate Services Manager at CBRE
Published on 21 April 2022
This month, we spoke to Lucy Mason, Estate Services Manager at CBRE and part of the estates team at Milton Park.
In our conversation with Lucy, we learned more about her role and involvement in helping the Park to gain the internationally-recognised ISO 14001 environmental management certification.
Hi Lucy! What does your role as Estate Services Manager involve?
My job is to make sure that people at Milton Park are happy with the buildings and environment in which they work in. It’s also my responsibility that the facilities are efficiently managed and meet high standards of compliance.
Both CBRE and Milton Park are very environmentally conscious, so part of my role is to help ensure resources at the Park are being consumed and utilised both responsibly and sustainably. One example of this is having timers set up in our buildings so that energy is only consumed by appliances specifically when people are present and using them.
Much of my focus last year was devoted to helping Milton Park secure the ISO 14001 certification, which we were delighted to be recently awarded.
Tell us more about the ISO 14001 certification and how this was achieved?
The ISO 14001 certification is an internationally-recognised standard for Environmental Management Systems (EMS) assessed by the British Standards Institution (BSI). Its overarching goal is to help companies and organisations to reduce their environmental impact, covering multiple aspects such as storage, manufacturing, consumption, distribution and waste.
Not only was this an opportunity to assess the Park’s environmental management standards, but we also saw this process as a way to demonstrate our commitment to sustainability to the wider Milton Park community.
We started the certification process back in March 2021. This involved the collation of many documents, risk and mitigation assessments, as well as undertaking standards testing. Following this, an in-person audit was carried out by BSI evaluating our lagoons, storage of fuels, waste systems and a whole host of environmental-related facilities and processes at the Park.
Finally, I’m really glad to say that after lots of hard work and passing various checks, we received the confirmation of our certification.
Can you give us some examples of some sustainable initiatives on the Park?
Recycling is a big part of Milton Park’s environmental management approach as we have a zero-to-landfill policy. Instead, every year we recycle in the region of 242 tonnes of mixed recycling which includes food. On top of this, we have recently recycled 80 tonnes of green waste.
We have also made the Park more environmentally-friendly by planting wildflower meadows, nurturing two bee colonies, decarbonising our supply chains and transitioning to clean, renewable energy sources.
How does the certification tie into Milton Park’s vision for the future?
By maintaining high standards of environmental and sustainable management, we’re taking greater steps to reduce our climate impact, while ensuring that we’re upholding commitments that contribute to and align with Milton Park’s 2040 Vision. The Vision provides a blueprint for how the Park will grow sustainably over the coming years.
How does your work and life connect at Milton Park?
I’m lucky to live very local to Milton Park so always try to take full advantage of the open green spaces to walk my dogs and appreciate the Park’s natural biodiversity. Also, the events put on by Milton Park allow me to mix with other companies and neighbours, which is a real positive and one of the highlights of working at Milton Park.
How can people get involved in sustainable action at Milton Park?
The Greener Workplace Forum is a great way of bringing people together from companies across the Park to share best practice and raise awareness of existing green initiatives around energy use, recycling and transport.
I attend the meetings mostly as a sounding board to answer people’s questions specific to buildings, facilities and, of course, anything ISO 14001-related!
I’d thoroughly recommend to anyone interested about any aspect of environmental sustainability at the Park to sign up to the Forum. The more people who are able to attend will mean greater opportunities for innovative ideas to come to the fore.
If you’re interested in joining the Forum, please do get in touch with Milton Park’s Sustainability and Community Manger, Veronica Reynolds. We hope to see you there!
