One of the defining features of the growing interest in green buildings and offices has been the emergence of a glut of environmental audit services designed to provide businesses with benchmarks against which to measure the success of their sustainable building initiatives.

One company that recently launched just such a service is global real estate advisory firm DTZ, and according to sustainability manager Paul Sutcliffe the offering has enjoyed solid take up as commercial landlords, tenants and property managers have increasingly looked to gauge their buildings' environmental performance.

Sutcliffe insists this sudden interest in audits is being driven by commercial and legal concerns as much as any desire to reduce their carbon footprints. "There is a clear business case for these audits in that following their recommendations helps future proof your investment in the building," he explains. "It helps you ensure legal compliance and will add value to the building."

Having a record of a building's environmental performance metrics will also make it easier for firms to comply with imminent energy performance certificate legislation, which from later this year will require commercial buildings to rate their energy efficiency.

The certificates will also provide landlords with a financial motivation for enhancing their buildings' energy performance, according to Sutcliffe. " Providing buildings with an A to G rating will create a top tier market for the most energy efficient buildings," he predicts. "As a property manager you'll be able to attract high profile clients and charge more - environmental audits are the first stage towards achieving that."

So what exactly do these eco-audits entail, how do they work, and most importantly are they genuinely helping to limit carbon emissions and improve building's environmental performance?

Sutcliffe accepts that there is huge variation between the different auditing services on offer and advises that property managers should assess what each service offers carefully before signing on the dotted line.

"There are a lot of audit services out there ranging from bespoke to standardised audits, such as the BREEAM [Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method] standards," he observes. "A lot of them are very useful, but they can tend to focus on one area, such as energy or water, so we developed our own audit with the aim of getting a whole overview of the building's environmental impact."

To that end DTZ's audits assesses four separate areas: building performance, operations and culture, carbon footprint, and socio-economic impact. As a result, argues Sutcliffe, firms can get a thorough overview of their building's overall environmental impact that assesses everything from energy efficiency and waste management to managerial practices and staff's travel habits.

However, regardless of how thorough an audit is Sutcliffe stresses that they are worthless if they are not then used as a starting point for performance improvement initiatives.

"A lot of organisations get a report back with 200 pages but because they are not specialists in construction or property management they don't know how to implement the recommendations effectively," he warns. "We aim to avoid that happening by running a workshop alongside the report highlighting the areas for improvement and how they fit in with their businesses priorities."