'The most cost-effective IT decisions are usually the most sustainable'

Jason Law, Group IT Director of Avant Homes on building sustainable tech

Moving IT infrastructure to a more sustainable footing and implementing formal reporting frameworks takes time, but there are lots of ways to use resources that you probably already have in order to make a start.

Avant Homes is a housebuilder headquartered in Chesterfield, with nine regional offices across the North and Midlands of England and in Scotland. Avant employs approximately 650 people and, according to Group IT Director Jason Law, has around 40 – 50 build sites ongoing at any one time.

Avant has a stated commitment to a strong ESG framework within its own business, the communities it helps to build and throughout the supply chain. How does this translate for Law's team of 16?

"As a business we do our own ESG reporting but it's in its infancy. We're in the midst now of formalising some of our policy and process around IT sustainability frameworks. We're just coming up to a review of mobile connectivity and we're currently defining the extent to which ESG will feature as part of that decision analysis."

"Traditionally when we make a procurement decision, we do a formal analysis taking in things like cost, extent to which proposed solution meets requirements, industry experience etc. We're trying to work out how sustainability fits into that.

"If we have a framework that judges the ESG credentials of a potential supplier, what impact does that have on Avant? How does it impact our own reporting?"

These are all questions that Law, and the wider business are currently grappling with.

Law also points out that whilst sustainability is what he calls a disruptor from a policy perspective, taking sustainable decisions usually has a positive impact on cost anyway. Whilst he doesn't feel under too much pressure right now to demonstrate the sustainability of the Avant infrastructure and supply chain he does anticipate change.

"We haven't formalised the process yet but we are trying to build a more sustainable supply chain for IT," he says.

"I am anticipating a request for more formalised reporting from IT. One of the challenges is all the different frameworks out there and trying to find your way through all the publications and guidance. Simplification would be welcome. "

It doesn't have to involve root and branch reform either. Sometimes small steps, and using the resources already available to you can reduce the footprint of an organisation.

"I was having a conversation last week with someone asking what more we can do from an IT perspective," explains Laws. I explained that there are things we can focus on that seem small but could make a big difference. Things like desktop modernization, trying to get more things done using Teams chat instead of sending emails which take up file storage footprint. That obviously that leads into a reduction in energy used.

"That led to a conversation about document retention. We've got documents going back years that are taking up storage. We discussed whether we really need to keep these documents which then led to us deciding that we needed to come up with a better data retention policy."

Sustainable BYOD

Another day-to-day infrastructure concern which has an impact on sustainability is asset management. When you have as many disparate sites and mobile users as Avant does this can be more challenging than a more traditionally office-based environment. Law explains:

"When a member of staff leaves a building site and it takes a month to get devices back and we then have a new starter come in, we've got nothing to repurpose. We end up buying new equipment when we could be repurposing and reallocating it."

This isn't just a waste of financial resources. As Law points out, it means extra materials and fuel impact. The company is working on formalising BYOD policy, again with sustainability as well as cost as a consideration.

"BYOD could have a positive impact of not having to buy new devices so there's a cost reduction. You also haven't got two phones using twice the environmental resources."

"In this industry, I think that the demand chain influences a lot. There's been a big focus on net carbon zero homes and I think the next step from the buyers will be wanting reassurance that if they're buying from Avant Homes then we're doing the right things from an ESG perdpective."

Sustainable cloud

Avant Homes is a cloud first business, and the cloud of choice is Microsoft Azure. That decision predates Law's tenure at Avant, but like many he considers the cloud more sustainable by default due to economies of scale.

"Our cloud first approach was probably predominantly driven based on cost and removing single points of failure internally with us being a relatively small team. However, as a byproduct of that, we are more sustainable because we're taking advantage of the aggregated resources that are used to service cloud as opposed to having our own infrastructure.

"I think with regards to sustainability there's an expectation, particularly of the big three, that they are investing in research and development and constantly improving the services that they offer. On premise we just don't have the heads to do it."

Whilst Avant is currently very much invested in Azure, Law points out that this is not necessarily going to be the case forever. Contracts do come round for renewal and Law thinks that the environmental reporting of the company providing cloud is likely to be part of the assessment process. However, he has identified another challenge:

"The challenge I sometimes find with sustainability with Microsoft, Google or AWS is benchmarking what they're claiming. How do we check and qualify claims?"

Quite so. Many businesses are looking at extending their use of cloud infrastructure to put their businesses on a more sustainable footing, but they aren't experts in GHG emission data, carbon trading, or the whole concept of built emissions, to provide a few examples. How can they qualify the ESG claims of the tech cloud giants? How can they be sure that data isn't being cherry picked or selectively presented?

Avant is not the only business who has raised this issue, and it's why Computing now conducts research into the sustainability claims of the big three cloud vendors every year. You can see this year's topline findings here.

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