How to get more value out of your GRESB stars
To achieve a GRESB star rating, you collect and analyse a wide range of data about your operations and assets. This data is incredibly valuable beyond just meeting reporting requirements. It can be used to streamline and improve processes throughout your business.
In this article, members of our GRESB team suggest three ways you can get wider value from the data you collect for your submission.
GRESB data collection doesn’t have to be a one-off exercise
Collecting data for your GRESB submission takes valuable time and effort, so it’s important to make sure you’re making the most of what you discover. Rather than treating GRESB as a box to tick once a year, separate from your other obligations, it can be extremely helpful to consider how the insights you gain can make other processes more efficient.
There are many opportunities that arise when you look at the patterns and trends GRESB data highlights. Analysing your findings can help you predict maintenance schedules and minimise risk, set realistic targets and improve your communications with investors and stakeholders.
Also, GRESB data often aligns with local regulations, so it can be repurposed. Knowing the interoperability of different frameworks can speed up the work needed for reporting obligations. For example, as GRESB AP Certified professional Saif Ahmed points out, “at Verco we can use the GRESB finalised asset-level spreadsheet to help with the creation of GHG inventory reporting, tracking performance against targets and identifying assets in greatest need of intervention or further analysis.”
GRESB data on operational efficiency can be analysed to pinpoint inefficiences and priorities
Ellie Bartlett, Consultant and GRESB AP Certified professional, explained that “companies can leverage the detailed data gathering required for the GRESB submission to their advantage, particularly when it comes to assessing operational efficiencies and timing audits. Understanding how your assets are performing against their peers, and the weighting each asset has within your portfolio, can help understand where to pinpoint efforts and assign CAPEX for improvements.
The risk, technical and efficiency assessments which form the Risk Assessment portion of the Performance section must be repeated every three years. This momentum provides an opportunity to combine the insights from the benchmark report (intensities, distance to benchmarks, like-for-like) and findings from the latest audits to your benefit.”
Ellie recommends capitalising on the routine of GRESB to predict maintenance schedules, identify inefficiencies, prioritise efficiency measures, and minimise risk without redoubling your efforts outside of season.
Data collected for GRESB can inform broader portfolio decarbonisation and risk management strategies
James Bennion, another member of the GRESB AP Certified team at Verco, added that an effective way clients can get wider value from the data they collect for GRESB is by using it to inform their portfolio decarbonisation and risk management strategies, rather than treating it as a separate, once-a-year reporting exercise.
He said: “At Verco, we help clients translate their GRESB datasets (such as asset-level energy use, building certifications, risk assessments, and ESG management practices) into actionable insights that support operational improvement, capital planning, and long-term net zero pathways. By cleaning, structuring, and analysing this data, we highlight underperforming assets, identify high-impact interventions, and uncover opportunities for cost savings and resilience. We also use the same evidence base to strengthen corporate disclosures (e.g., TCFD/ISSB), inform investment decisions, and anticipate future regulatory or scoring changes. In this way, GRESB data becomes a strategic tool: not just for boosting scores, but for driving real performance improvement across a portfolio.”
How our clients get a strong return on investment from our services
We help at all stages of the GRESB submission process
As part of our GRESB services, we provide full project management (including regular progress updates and indicator tracking), systematic reviews, and internally developed tools that help with indicator status tracking, entity-level tracking and asset-level analysis. These tools aid and streamline your reporting, which is of value across your business.
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Verco’s GRESB AP Certified professionals have a track record of helping clients regularly achieve 4 or 5 stars, and those who work with us usually score 5 points or more above the GRESB average. We’re also a GRESB Premier Partner, which means we provide feedback that helps guide GRESB’s decisions, and we’re always informed about the latest changes.
- We help clients understand where GRESB sits within their wider reporting requirements
In such a busy reporting landscape, it can help to understand the interoperability of various disclosures. Our experts can recommend ways to make the most efficient use of your data. For example, we have developed this handy online tool that will give you an instant, shareable summary of the schemes your business should be participating in as well as an overview of what they involve. Simply complete the short questionnaire: