While Coronavirus is causing disruption to businesses and normal working patterns all around the world, at Identity Consult we are fortunate to be able to continue working on our projects and providing services for our clients remotely during this difficult time.
It is clear though that we have all had to adapt to new ways of working during this lockdown period. Through working remotely, Identity Consult as an SME of 40 employees, have collectively not driven approximately 36,285 miles in the month of April alone, saving 10,552kg of CO2 emissions*. Not only that, but we have saved 953 hours of staff personal time in commuting and 259 hours of business time in driving to meetings**.
This has been calculated by working out our average commute across our 3 offices, which is in the region of 28,591 miles, or around 32 miles round trip, per person, per day. We were surprised at how high this number was, so we have double checked the figures! On top of this, our average business mileage is around 8,574 miles per month, giving a total distance driven by staff of around 37,165 mile every month. This month we have driven almost no mileage, so our estimated total reduction is 36,285 miles.
We all know that in the long term, when it is appropriate to do so and we have the necessary directives from the government, we will return to working from our offices, but working remotely as we have done for the past few weeks has really shown what we can do, how we can work more efficiently, and that we may choose not to be so reliant on the combustion engine and more reliant on technology, whilst continuing to promote using public transport as we always have done.
As an example, and as some food for thought, if everyone worked from home 1 day a week and 1 in 5 meetings were held as video-conferences, it would reduce our annual mileage by around 89,197 miles! Over the course of a year this equates to approximately 25,940kg of carbon emissions* which would be avoided, 685 hours** of business time spent driving to meetings saved and an average of 57 hours** commuting time saved per employee!
This would be the positive impact from an SME, I’d be interested to know how other businesses compare and how much time, money and carbon others could save by changing the way they work, even just 1 day a week. Please let us know your results!
Duncan Rae
Project Manager & BIM Consultant
*Carbon savings based on a “medium car” of unknown fuel type, with emissions of 0.29082kg per mile, as per https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/greenhouse-gas-reporting-conversion-factors-2019
**Time savings based on driving at 30mph, a guesstimate for average rush-hour commuting speed & city driving.