Sustainability Report

2020

Our Sustainability Strategy

As a Canadian leader in institutional real estate, Triovest creates sustainable places that enhance communities and enrich relationships. Our values-driven organization integrates sustainability throughout the business to deliver results and long-term value.

Letter From The CEO

Why Sustainability Matters

Triovest has a bright future, as we grow our business and deliver greater value to our clients by realizing the full potential of the assets and portfolios under our management.

In September 2020, I was honoured to join Triovest as the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer. At the time, people, families, communities and businesses around the world were still facing the devastating impacts and unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Triovest was no exception. However, I believe Triovest – with our client-focused, values-based approach – is well positioned to meet these challenges while also building on our successes through several growth opportunities.

As I look back at 2020, I first want to recognize everyone who works on Triovest’s behalf for how well they performed during a year of so many uncertainties. Our team members worked closely with clients to manage their real estate assets responsibly and effectively. Guidance on health and safety protocols to manage the virus required frequent communications with property managers and clients to ensure buildings across our portfolio were implementing best practices related to sanitation, air quality, path of travel, social distancing, personal protective equipment and more. The company also experienced an unprecedented downturn in the collection of rents and a rise in defaults, especially in the retail space, and our property management and accounting teams did a tremendous job of working with tenants and managing this challenge.

Triovest also went through several organizational changes. Some of these were precipitated by the pandemic and others were necessary to drive the company to the next phase of growth. We re-examined our organization and shifted resources toward the “front office”– that is, those functions and efforts that improve the client experience and directly support the growth of our business.

Another significant change we initiated at Triovest during the year was the digitizing of several processes. The sudden shift to remote working during the pandemic accelerated some of these efforts with the deployment of technology and paperless solutions.

Our change management process is underway to support employees as we reposition the organization to grow our lines of business, streamline processes, attract the best and brightest talent, and further establish Triovest as one of the best real estate managers in Canada.

Integrated throughout our strategic plan and day-to-day management of our properties is sustainability. Triovest’s strong track record of sustainability leadership is a differentiator, and we believe our advice on how strong environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices can drive superior returns is an important value-added service for our clients.

To demonstrate our commitment, we set three-year targets for our operations to manage energy and water use, greenhouse gas emissions and waste. The targets are embedded in individual performance evaluations, and each property has a performance scorecard that tracks its performance against the target objectives.

Because assets with a high sustainability rating are more attractive to investors, sustainability is a key consideration when Triovest invests in a property. We are striving to increase the percentage of our portfolio that has a green building certification from the most widely recognized standards organizations, such as BOMA BEST, Fitwel and LEED. Around 71 percent of our current portfolio has at least one green building certification, and we would like to grow that to be closer to 80 percent of all our buildings and assets.

We also plan to expand our advisory services beyond property-level sustainability issues to include counsel on broader and emerging issues such as net-zero carbon emissions strategies. Supporting this goal is the role of Energy Manager, who acts as an advisor to the Property Manager, and we plan to hire additional Energy Managers in 2021.

I am very proud of all that Triovest accomplished in 2020, growing the overall business despite headwinds from the pandemic. Among Triovest’s four areas of real estate – office, industrial, retail and multi-family residential – Triovest offset a slowdown in demand in the office and retail segments by expanding our industrial property portfolio. We now have 29 industrial properties under development across Canada, making Triovest one of the leading industrial developers in the country.

Triovest has a bright future as we grow our business and deliver greater value to our clients by realizing the full potential of our assets and portfolios under our management. Our continued commitment to operate responsibly will be vital for achieving our mission to create sustainable places that enhance communities and enrich relationships.

Ted Willcocks’ signature

Ted Willcocks
President and Chief Executive Officer
Triovest Inc.

Case Studies

Working Together to Keep People Safe and Prepare for a Return to the Workplace

How Energy Managers Support Triovest’s Energy Conservation Goals

Safety Academy Provides Every Triovest Employee Training on Key Health and Safety Matters

Our Priorities

Our business, as well as stakeholder expectations, is constantly evolving. At Triovest, we regularly engage with stakeholders to better understand the sustainability topics that are most relevant to them and to our business. Our 2020 Materiality Matrix presents 32 distinct topics with each assigned to one of four sustainability categories – Environmental, Social, Governance and Financial – and ranked in terms of importance to both internal and external stakeholders.

Employees

The more than 500 employees who work on Triovest’s behalf are our greatest strength and essential to our long-term success. We strive for a workplace that is healthy and safe, engages employees through communications and feedback mechanisms, supports careers and lifelong learning opportunities, promotes diversity and inclusion, and removes barriers so everyone can reach their full potential.

Named 2020 Employee Recommended Workplace for the fourth straight year by The Globe and Mail

Health and safety risk management audits at 82 properties

Hosted a virtual diversity and inclusion speaker series for employees

Environment

Across Triovest’s Canada-wide commercial real estate portfolio of more than 400 properties, we are focused on environmentally sustainable building design and operations. Triovest’s efforts to minimize environmental impacts and take action include our climate resiliency and healthy building initiatives and our three-year targets to reduce waste, energy and water use, and greenhouse gas emissions.

4-star

Achieved a 4-star rating in the 2020 GRESB Real Estate Assessment

71%

of property portfolio is LEED, BOMA BEST, Fitwel or other green-building certified

Clients

Triovest’s clients entrust us to strengthen the financial security of their assets and provide long-term value appreciation by managing their commercial properties effectively and responsibly. Integrating sustainability – such as green lease clauses and sustainability-specific requirements in tenant fit-out programs – into our asset management process is a key aspect of creating value for our clients.

Joined the Fitwel Champions health and well-being program and certified one project in 2020 under the program

Developing 29 industrial properties to meet growing investor interest and client demand

Communities

The nature of our business offers us the opportunity to connect with communities across Canada every day. Along with local and national partnerships with community organizations that positively influence lives and strengthen the communities in which we operate, Triovest gives back to communities through a Corporate Giving Program and by supporting the charitable efforts of our employees.

Offered free use of five million square feet of vacant commercial space for Canada’s COVID-19 response effort

Redirected $89,167 budgeted for holiday events to support food banks and other charitable organizations

$100,000 donated to charitable organizations through corporate donations and Triovest’s employee giving platform (with donations up to $300 matched by Triovest)

Expanded Diabetes Canada’s clothing donation bin program to nine properties

Downloads

Triovest is committed to transparently reporting our performance across all our material sustainability topics. We follow the GRI Standards for sustainability reporting, and the downloadable GRI Index discloses our performance for the 2020 calendar year.

Summary Report

GRI Index

Sustainability Report 2020